Social Class and Premarital Sexual Permissiveness: A Subsequent Test

Abstract

This paper attempts a subsequent test of Reiss' hypothesis that among conservatives those of higher social status are less permissive than those of lower status while among liberals the relationship is in the opposite direction. A student sample was utilized and measures of fundamentalism. idealism, academic orientation, and authoritarianism were used independently to identify liberals and conservatives. Both a chi-square test and a sign test were applied to the data; neither test confirmed Reiss' hypothesis. An extraordinarily strong relationship between permissiveness and the sex of the person, however, was found. Consequently the data was reanalyzed while controlling for sex in order to investigate the possibility that the validity of the hypothesis is contingent upon a condition, the sex of a person, but again the hypothesis was not confirmed.