Support for Prostitution Legalization in Romania: Individual, Household, and Socio-cultural Determinants

Construction and Validation of a Scale to Assess Social Judgments Toward Sex Work from the Stereotype Content Model

Sex workers (SW) are subject to social judgment and the associated attitudes, ranging from admiration to contempt. The presence of stereotypical attitudes toward SW is common and can be analyzed using the Stereotype Content Model (SCM), where the concepts of warmth and competence play a central role. The interweaving of both dimensions allows the identification of four emotions and corresponding political positions toward SW: admiration (non-interventionism), pity (abolitionism), contempt (prohibitionism), and fear (regulationism). From the SCM framework, this study offers the construction, validation and performance of a 25-item scale with a snowball sample of 1,543 participants residing in Spanish-speaking countries. The four-factor hypothesized model yielded adequate values. Internal consistency was sufficient on all factors, as was model-based reliability and convergent validity. The scale also showed measurement invariance between gender and age groups, suggesting that the measure is interpreted in a conceptually similar manner by respondents representing different genders or ages. Further analysis revealed that male participants scored significantly higher on admiration. Baby boomers showed less pity and contempt while Millennials showed more fear and less admiration. SW and those who know or work with SW showed less fear and pity and more admiration. The SCM and the process of developing social judgments offer us a way to understand the differences that underlie irreconcilable policy positions. Overcoming these differences requires mutual understanding from scientific frameworks instead of from ideological perspectives.

Attitudes Toward Cisgender Women's Participation in Sex Work: Opportunity for Agency or Harmful Exchange?

Despite the stigmatization of sex work in society, little empirical research has examined attitudes toward sex work, especially its modern incarnations (e.g., sugar relationships, webcamming). Here, a sample of 298 US residents (Mage = 40.06 years; 59.1% male, 40.9% female) was recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Various theoretical predictors (e.g., right-wing authoritarianism [RWA]), sociosexuality) were set to predict the degree to which four sex work domains (prostitution, pornography, sugar relationships, webcamming) provide cisgender women agency (beneficial) or harm them (detrimental). We found that the domains of sex work were organized hierarchically, as theorized by the so-called "whorearchy," whereby the more "unfavorable" domains (e.g., prostitution) fall at the bottom, and the more "favorable" ones (e.g., webcamming) sit at the top. Additionally, multiple regression analyses revealed that RWA (negatively) and sociosexuality (positively) were the strongest predictors of sex work agency across various domains. In predicting harm, RWA, feminism, religiosity, and age were unique positive predictors, whereas sociosexuality and male (vs. female) self-identified sex were unique negative predictors, across the four domains of sex work. Moreover, individual differences (e.g., RWA) were often significantly stronger predictors of agency or harm among female than male participants. The results suggest that although sex work domains vary in agency and harm ratings, individual differences (most notably, RWA and sociosexuality) are important predictors across domains, especially for cisgender women. Given the growing prevalence of such online forms of sex work, along with growing evidence of sugar relationships, it will become increasingly important to track reactions as these forms of sex work evolve.

Asking About "Prostitution", "Sex Work" and "Transactional Sex": Question Wording and Attitudes Toward Trading Sexual Services

This study explored the impact of question wording on attitudes toward trading sexual services. There are no previous research agendas investigating how views on the trade in sex are susceptible to question word choice. We utilized an original survey to assess how three different concepts used to represent the exchange of sexual services impact on the reported level of acceptability among respondents. The concepts we selected were "prostitution," "sex work", and "transactional sex." We also explored the contrasting effects of predictor variables based on question wording, such as general sexual attitudes and positive and negative associations with trading sex. We found that attitudes toward the trading of sex is partially a function of question wording. Respondents were more likely to translate negative associations with the exchange of sexual services into unacceptability when assigned a question using the term prostitution. The results indicated that prostitution is a stigmatized word, resonating more negatively with respondents as compared to sex work or transactional sex. When asked about transactional sex, respondents were less likely to translate an attitude into an assessment on acceptability, indicating that the term is vague. Sex work elicited more neutral responses on acceptability. The results suggest that sex work would be the most useful term to use in dialogue and debate regarding the trade in sexual services. Sex work does not appear to be imbued with the same sense of negativity as prostitution and the meaning of sex work seems clearer than transactional sex.