United Press International - Thursday, 8 February 2001
Marcella S. Kreiter

UI at Urbana-Champaign professor Sunyna Williams has been researching the sexual behavior of college students for the past five years and will be publishing the results of four studies in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology later this year. The research earlier was presented to the American Psychological Association and the American Public Health Association.

Williams said everyone lies at times in sexual situations.

"People tend to lie less within the context of an ongoing primary relationship than they do with a casual partner," Williams said. "They tend to lie less about things they think are risk-relevant, like diseases, than risk-irrelevant (things) like thoughts and feelings."

But there is one glaring exception.

"The most common lie that was told across the board was lying about cheating in an established relationship," she said.

Williams studied 800 students at UIUC and State University of New York College at Buffalo, asking them both theoretical questions and about actual situations. She found even when people said they would lie or had lied, they exhibited relatively little denial or rationalization about their lying.

"If they do happen to tell a lie about something that's risk-relevant, they feel a lot worse about it... and they see that it's serious and unacceptable," she said. "Many of them said they were lying to keep the partner from mistrusting them."

Williams said the closer a couple become, the more important honesty becomes.

"That's when the open communication is the most important because that's when they potentially put themselves at greatest risk (dispensing with precautions like condoms)," she said.

People in longer-term relationships that go through stages actually are at more risk than those in more casual encounters.

"Longer term partners can't imagine not trusting the other person," she said. "Long-term relationships are characterized by greater trust and honesty, except the person is particularly vulnerable to sexual infidelity.

"In a one-night stand, they don't talk at all (about sexual history). They just produce a condom. That kind of behavior used to have very negative implications -- that you slept around or were expecting to have sex. They don't worry about the negative implications of that now."

Dr. Carol Ellison, author of "Women's Sexualities: Generations Of Women Share Intimate Secrets Of Sexual Self-Acceptance," said Williams' findings are good news.

"The key there is especially when the relationship is more committed," Ellison said. "In casual dating, people who have herpes or are HIV positive may just feel, if it's just casual, the other person is responsible for asking."

Professor Jack Porter of West Chester University in West Chester, Pa., said it's not really a matter of people being more honest. It's more that sexuality has become "a more open, frank and less hidden phenomenon."

"They share not because they are being honest, but because it is a societal quality," he said. "I think people were pretty fed up with the Victorian, restrictive, constrictive standard. Everybody was an example of immaculate conception.

"(Now) it's OK to talk about sexuality. It's OK to talk about enhancing a relationship."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports more than 65 million Americans suffer from incurable sexually transmitted diseases, with another 15 million added to the total annually.

More than 25 diseases are spread through sexual contact including HIV/AIDS, herpes, syphilis and gonorrhea, which is on the rise for the first time in two decades. About a quarter of those infected annually are teenagers, with women suffering the most serious consequences, including the development of pelvic inflammatory disease, which can lead to potentially fatal ectopic pregnancy.

Research presented this week at a virology conference in Chicago indicates 30 percent of young, homosexual black men are infected with HIV, even though they grew up knowing about the risks of AIDS.

"STDs are hidden epidemics of enormous health and economic consequence in the United States," said the Institute of Medicine in its 1997 report, "The Hidden Epidemic: Confronting Sexually Transmitted Diseases."

"STDs are public health problems that lack easy solutions because they are rooted in human behavior and fundamental societal problems. ...The first hurdle will be to confront the reluctance of American society to openly confront issues surrounding sexuality and STDs."

A study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found prime-time television is bombarding viewers with sexual content. The study found sexual content in 75 percent of prime-time fare, up from 66 percent two years ago, and that the subject is clearly a laughing matter, being a staple on numerous situation comedies.

Williams said that's not all bad.

"What happened with HIV in the '80s is it actually got people talking about sex more openly without feeling awkward," she said. "That's positive in terms of being safer and making people less likely to lie. It makes people more open."

Psychologist Ellison agreed, adding if television would be less reluctant about showing people pulling out condoms or showing sexual honesty, "that would be the best sexual education we could have."

"A lot of young people seek to solve (sexual) mysteries through what they see on TV," she said.
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