The Role of Physical Attractiveness in Sexual Risk Behaviors

Background: Research has long been focused on the idea of sensation seeking behaviors among youth. Scholars show that youth exhibiting such behaviors are more at-risk for other decisions disadvantageous to their health and well-being. Such behaviors include risky-sex and impulsive decision-making. A small body of literature within this context, has looked at certain body image characteristics and personal perceptions that may also contribute to risky sexual behaviors and increased risk taking. Factors such as positive perception of physical attraction, perceived value as a romantic partner, facial attractiveness, and sexual esteem have been shown as related to sexual experience.

Campus sexual experiences and factors associated with risky sexual behaviors make up a growing body of literature seeking to better understand and ultimately address instances of sexual risk taking. With an eye on understanding, our research hopes to illuminate one aspect of this social problem faced by youth. To grant greater insight into the connection between personal perception of attractiveness and sexual vulnerability, we have analyzed data from the Online College Social Life Survey and use this work to question the connection between engagement in risky sexual behaviors and physical attractiveness. We discuss implications for future work and social work intervention implementation, including its use for a more in-depth behavior analysis to highlight the strength of the relationship.

While our study is related to the above-mentioned literature, we contribute to the field by applying these concepts to a recent and rigorously collected data set in ways that open the conversation for future program development and discussions of risky-sex in the college environment.

Methods: Data: We use data from the Online College Social Life Survey (OCSLS) collected between 2005 and 2011 at 21 four-year colleges and universities in the US. The sample includes 24,298 responses from individuals aged 18-25 years with a majority of responses generated from state universities.

Measures: First, in the OCSLS, we split the sample between males and females leaving us with a sample of n=10,139 females. Second, a sexual risk measure was generated with five items: number of sexual partners, age at first sex, number of prior hook ups with strangers, ever had sex outside of an exclusive relationship, and ever had multiple ongoing sexual partners. We used regression analyses to investigate the relationship between physical attractiveness and sexual risk behaviors.

Results: Results show that physical attractiveness was significantly associated with engaging in sexual risk behaviors (p<.01) even after controlling for age, mother's education, race, and type of college.  

Conclusions and Implications: Our findings suggest that there is a relationship between perceived physical attractiveness and sexual risk behaviors but is in need of further exploration. These findings have implications for social workers and university staff working to support young people in understanding and reducing likelihood for engagement in risky sexual behaviors.