Essentially, the study defined a promiscuous female as one who had slept with at least 20 persons by their early 20’s. These women were most likely to be rejected a friendship by other women. Experts are not entirely sure why this is, but they have a theory; an evolutionary instinct to protect our relationships.
The study consisted of the following:
751 University students at Cornell were selected to participate. Each person provided explicit information on their sexual history as well as their views on casual and formal sex. Each person was to read an almost identical story about a male or female peer, the only difference in the story was whether the character had 2 or 20 lifetime sexual partners. Each student then would rate the character on their potential friendship factors, such as morality, competence, warmth, overall likeability and emotional stability.
The results are fascinating:
All female participants (regardless of their OWN promiscuity) viewed other promiscuous females more negatively. So much more negatively, in fact, that the female participants ranked promiscuous women badly in 9 out of 10 friendship attributes. Even the female participants who are actively promiscuous themselves viewed the promiscuous character negatively.
The men, however, showed no difference whatsoever in friendship rankings vs. male character promiscuity.
This coorelation is consistent with the societal double standard that we uphold: Promiscuous women are ‘easy’ and ‘whore-ish’ while promiscuous men are ‘studly’ and ‘accomplished’.
Sources: Daily Mail