Promiscuity

Promiscuity is the practice of making relatively casual and indiscriminate choices. The term is most commonly applied to sexual behaviour, where it refers to sexual intercourse that is not in the framework of a long term monogamous sexual relationship. People who are called "promiscuous", within the scope of this usage, may actually be quite selective in their choice of sexual partners. Nonetheless, because of the popularity of this usage, the remainder of this article discusses sexual promiscuity.

Sexual promiscuity carries with it a higher risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease. It has been shown that, in some cases, excessively promiscuous behaviour is caused by bipolar disorder, brain tumours, or alcoholism and substance abuse.

Promiscurity is discouraged by all of the main modern day religions. However, some sects, cults, and religious orders have a place for promiscuous behaviour. For example, there were special examples of religious prostitution in ancient Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome.

Human promiscuity

Detail

What is considered socially acceptable sexual behaviour, and what behaviour is regarded as "promiscuous", vary widely among different cultures and different groups within a culture. In some contexts, a woman who has sex with any man other than her husband is considered promiscuous, while the term may not be applied to a man from the same culture likewise having extramarital sex. In other cultures, the term may be applied to anyone who has more than one lover at the same time. In some sections of industrialised societies, it is likely to be used only of people who have large numbers of sexual partners with a seeming lack of discrimination.

It is difficult to accurately assess people's sexual behaviour, since there are strong social and personal motivations to either minimise or exaggerate reported sexual activity, depending on social sanctions and taboos.

The best statistics of human sexual behaviour is derived from research into sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Extensive research has been conducted to study different mathematical models of sexual behaviour and to compare the results generated with the observed prevalence of STDs to try to estimate the probable actual sexual behaviour of the population.

People's numbers of sexual partners, both over their lifetime and concurrently, varies widely within any population. Studies of STD spread have consistently shown that a small minority of the population have substantially more partners than the average, and a large minority have less than the average. One important question in STD epidemiology is whether these groups have sex mostly within their groups (so-called assortative mixing) or at random.

In the animal world

In the animal world, some species of animals, including birds such as swans, once believed monogamous, are now known to engage in extra-pair copulations. Although social monogamy occurs in about 90 percent of avian species and about 3 percent of mammalian species, investigators estimate that 90 percent of socially monogamous species exhibit individual promiscuity in the form of extra-pair copulations.Reichard, U.H. (2002). Monogamy—A variable relationship. Max Planck Research, 3, 62-67.Barash, D.P. & Lipton, J.E. (2001). The Myth of Monogamy. New York, NY: W.H. Freeman and Company.Research conducted by Patricia Adair Gowaty. Reported by Morell, V. (1998). Evolution of sex: A new look at monogamy. Science, 281, 1982-1983.

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Model validation and assessment of uncertainty in a deterministic model for gonorrhea

Human sexuality

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Human promiscuity

Detail

In the animal world

References

See also

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