How and Why Measure the Attitude Towards Masturbation?

What is it about?

Masturbation is a behavior present from childhood to adulthood, however, throughout history, it has been stigmatized from traditional and orthodox positions that have tried to instill a negative view about its practice. The impact of this behavior on sexual health has been extensively studied. Masturbation promotes sexual health, positive intimacy experiences, and self-knowledge and self-exploration, among other benefits. Despite this, recent studies still show that a negative attitude towards this behavior may persist in a minority of Spanish society. Despite the importance of masturbation in sexual health, to date, there have been no adapted and validated instruments to assess the attitude towards this behavior in the Spanish population. Therefore, this study developed an instrument in Spanish to assess negative attitudes towards masturbation. The Negative Attitudes Towards Masturbation Inventory (NATMI) is an instrument originally composed of 30 items distributed in three dimensions (positive attitudes towards masturbation, false beliefs about the harmful nature of masturbation, and personally experienced negative affects associated with masturbation) that quantify the negative attitude towards this behavior. After a rigorous process of linguistic adaptation to Spanish, a version was obtained and administered to 1,867 men and 2,249 women, aged between 18 and 83 years. Psychometric analyses led to a reduced version of ten items (e.g., " Masturbation in an adult is juvenile and immature" or "I feel guilty about masturbating"). People with a more negative attitude toward masturbation indicated that they prayed more often and masturbated less. Besides, they had a more negative attitude toward sexuality in general and toward sexual fantasies in particular. They also showed greater sexual inhibition due to the threat of performance failure, probably because of a lack of self-exploration and self-knowledge as a consequence of masturbating less. Along the same lines, these people with a negative attitude toward masturbation, compared to those with a more positive attitude, reported having worse sexual functioning, i.e., lower sexual desire, greater difficulty with erection in the case of men or vaginal lubrication problems in the case of women, more difficulties in reaching orgasm, and lower satisfaction associated with orgasm. Also, its scores have allowed us to observe the impact of negative attitudes towards masturbation on important variables for sexual health.

Featured Image

Photo by Deon Black on Unsplash

Photo by Deon Black on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Considering the therapeutic relevance of masturbation for the treatment of problems associated with sexual desire or orgasm, it is worth highlighting the usefulness of this scale to assess attitudes towards this behavior.

Perspectives