How Exposure to Literary Genres Relates to Attitudes Toward Gender Roles and Sexual Behavior

Although past research has explored the association between media of many forms (e.g., TV, music, advertising) and sexual socialization, books are 1 form of media that has largely been ignored with respect to this topic. The current study examined the relationship between lifetime exposure to different genres of text and sexual attitudes, including gender role stereotyping and sexual conservatism. We examined both broad categories of books (i.e., fiction vs. nonfiction) along with 4 separate fiction genres (domestic, romance, science-fiction/fantasy, and suspense/thriller). Participants completed a survey that included measures of lifetime exposure to text, gender role egalitarianism, gender role stereotyping, and sexual conservatism. Greater exposure to fiction, but not nonfiction, was related to increased gender role egalitarianism and reduced gender role stereotyping. No strong associations between the individual genres and the measures of sexual attitudes were observed. These results contribute to the growing body of evidence that reading literary fiction is associated with a wide variety of positive social outcomes.