Sexual Strategies Predict Attitudes Toward Drug Use

Why does a stranger care about your drug usage? Or your promiscuity? A recent study has found it be part of their sexual reproductive strategy.

The study, published last week in the Proceedings of Royal Society B, indicates that a person's sexual attitudes cause their attitudes toward non-medical use of drugs. Contrary to popular belief, their political leanings and religious beliefs are not the cause in spite of the strong connections between them.

Previous studies had shown there to be a high correlation between promiscuity and non-medical drug use, so the researchers set up conditions to investigate what might be the causative factor(s). They questioned participants' personalities, political opinions, religiosity, sexual attitudes and moral views among other traits. They found that attitudes about non-medical drug use are a result of a person's sexual strategy. Furthermore, religious and moral views seemed to be influenced by sexual reproductive strategy rather than the other way around.

Lead author of the study, Robert Kurzban, associate professor in the Department of Psychology at University of Pennsylvania, states that:

Condemnation of drug usage might be best understood in the context of strategic dynamics, with individuals influencing moral rules in a way that favors their own competitive reproductive strategies. We expect that this relationship between sexual strategy and moral stances will occur in other areas as well, such as attitudes toward prostitution, sexual education or abortion.

From scienceblog.com via clp.ly

In non-scientific English, this means that

The relationships of people following a more committed, monogamous reproductive strategy are put at greater risk when casual sex is prevalent. On the other hand, people pursuing a less committed lifestyle seek to avoid having their choices moralized, forbidden and punished.

From scienceblog.com via clp.ly