The dangers of self-pleasure... and framing

Framing a relationship in a certain context can have a powerful influence on how you feel about the relationship. In fact, you can insidiously undermine a relationship just by planting certain ideas about what is normal.

That’s exactly what Norbert Schwartz did in a study of male college students. Schwartz selected students who were already in a relationship with a steady partner, and he asked them a number of questions about their sex lives. One of the questions was how often the men masturbated, but Schwartz added a sly wrinkle. He used two different scales when he asked the question. One group was given a scale that ranged from more than once a day to less than once a week (the high frequency scale). The other group was given a scale ranging from more than once a week to never (the low frequency group, or in Seinfeldian terms, the masters of their domain). Needless to say, the rigged scales influenced the amount of masturbation the men reported—those on the high frequency scale reported slightly more than nine episodes a month, while those in the low frequency group reported slightly more than seven episodes a month—but even with that shift, both groups still fell within the typical range, according to numerous studies of sexual behavior.

The really interesting aspect of the study was how it influenced the men’s perception of their relationship. Depending on the scale used, the answers appeared at very different points in the spectrum, even though the actual amount of masturbation was similar. For the high frequency scale, once or twice a week put them in the middle, which made their answers seem entirely normal and unexceptionable. For the low frequency scale, though, once or twice a week put them at the high end of the scale, which fostered the impression that they were engaging in an excessive amount of self-flagellation. Planting that one small seed of worry—framing the question so that the students thought that they were masturbating too much—didn’t just affect the students’ opinions of their sex lives. It affected their entire relationship. In follow-up questionnaires, Schwartz found that these students were plagued with doubts and expressed more dissatisfaction with their relationships. He got a similar result when he manipulated the scales for a question on the frequency of sex between the men and their partners.

Even when it comes to something like personal attraction, we are far more malleable and open to influence than we think. As numerous studies have found, we tend to make better judgments about our relationships when we trust our intuition, while thinking too much tends to screw us up. Something to keep in mind as Valentine's Day approaches.