Avoidant romantic attachment and female orgasm: Testing an emotion-regulation hypothesis

Abstract

Recent research indicating that roughly a third of the variation in female orgasmic frequency is heritable leaves a substantial amount of non-heritable variation to be explained. Given that emotion regulation is central to attachment theory and that attachment insecurity in infancy and avoidance in adulthood are not heritable, it was predicted that (higher levels of) avoidance would predict (lower levels of) female orgasmic frequency. Results of an Internet survey of 323 women (mean age = 24.39 years) proved consistent with this hypothesis. Results are discussed in terms of developmental influence on adult reproductive behavior, evolution, and the characteristics of the sample.