Women's Sexual Self-Schema

Sexual self-schemas are cognitive generalizations about sexual aspects of oneself that are derived from past experience, manifest in current experience, influential in the processing of sexually relevant social information, and guide sexual behavior. In Part I, a measure of a cognitive self-view of women's sexuality was developed. The construct includes 2 positive aspects, an inclination to experience passionate-romantic emotions and a behavioral openness to sexual experience, and a negative aspect, embarrassment or conservativism, which may be a deterrent to sexual-romantic affects and behaviors. In Part II, the role of sexual schema in intrapersonal and interpersonal aspects of sexuality was examined. In Part III, a bivariate model was explored and 4 self-views—positive, co-schematic, aschematic, and negative—were proposed and compared.