Sakellariou Chris
School of Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, 48 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639818, Singapore.
Sci Rep. 2025 Aug 26;15(1):31488. doi: 10.1038/s41598-025-17097-9.
This study used the latest waves of Add Health longitudinal data to assess the size of the protective effect of religiosity on later sexual behaviour in young adults (number of opposite sex partners and early sexual initiation). Related research questions were investigated, namely whether the influence of higher religiosity on sexual behaviour operates linearly and whether findings are robust to omitted variables bias. A general finding is that only for highly religious male and female participants is the effect robust. A related finding is that, after accounting for the protective effect of high religiosity, the independent effect of being religiously affiliated is protective for women of Catholic affiliation (compared to having no affiliation) but weakly towards more promiscuous behaviour for men of Catholic affiliation (gender difference statistically significant). This suggests that some religiously affiliated young males may see less of a need to reconcile any conflict between religious teachings and their sexual behaviour, unless religious teachings are internalized. Finally, after investigating the robustness of findings to biases due to omitted variables bias, there is additional support to the main conclusion that a robust effect of religiosity on sexual behaviour can be established only in individuals of high religiosity.
本研究使用了最新几轮的“青少年健康纵向研究”（Add Health）数据，以评估宗教信仰对年轻人后期性行为（异性伴侣数量和过早开始性行为）的保护作用大小。对相关研究问题进行了调查，即更高的宗教信仰对性行为的影响是否呈线性，以及研究结果对遗漏变量偏差是否具有稳健性。一个普遍的发现是，只有高度虔诚的男性和女性参与者，这种影响才是稳健的。一个相关的发现是，在考虑了高度宗教信仰的保护作用之后，宗教归属的独立影响对天主教归属的女性具有保护作用（与无宗教归属相比），但对天主教归属的男性的滥交行为影响较弱（性别差异具有统计学意义）。这表明，一些有宗教归属的年轻男性可能觉得不太需要调和宗教教义与他们性行为之间的任何冲突，除非宗教教义被内化。最后，在调查了研究结果对遗漏变量偏差导致的偏差的稳健性之后，进一步支持了主要结论，即只有在高度虔诚的个体中才能确立宗教信仰对性行为的稳健影响。
