Sexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Social Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions Roy F. Baumeister Department of Psychology Florida State University Kathleen D. Vohs Faculty of Commerce, Marketing Division University of British Columbia A heterosexual community can be analyzed as a marketplace in which men seek to ac- quire sex from women by offering other resources in exchange. Societies will therefore define gender roles as if women are sellers and men buyers of sex. Societies will en- dow female sexuality, but not male sexuality, with value (as in virginity, fidelity, chas- tity). The sexual activities of different couples are loosely interrelated by a market- place, instead of being fully separate or private, and each couple’s decisions may be influenced by market conditions. Economic principles suggest that the price of sex will depend on supply and demand, competition among sellers, variations in product, collusion among sellers, and other factors. Research findings show gender asymme- tries (reflecting the complementary economic roles) in prostitution, courtship, infidel- ity and divorce, female competition, the sexual revolution and changing norms, un- equal status between partners, cultural suppression of female sexuality, abusive relationships, rape, and sexual attitudes. Sexual activity is often regarded as among the most private of activities, negotiated by two individuals on the basis of their own individual desires and values. Idealistic treatments describe the two individuals as potentially equal and interchangeable. In this article, we place sexual negotiations in the context of a cultural system in which men and women play different roles resembling buyer and seller—in a marketplace that is ineluctably affected by the exchanges between other buyers and sellers. In recent decades, two main theoretical approaches have dominated the field of sexuality. One of these em- phasizes biological determinants, especially as shaped by evolutionary pressures. The other emphasizes social construction, especially as shaped by political forces. Both have proposed to explain differences between men and women. The evolutionary approach stresses the different reproductive strategies of men and women and the difference as to what pattern of sexual response would have led to the highest quality and number of successful offspring. The social constructionist approach, generally based on feminist theory, has emphasized male subjugation of women and how women respond to their oppressed position in society. Thus, the disci- plines of biology and politics have been most promi- nent in guiding how psychologists think about sex. This article turns to a different discipline, namely economics, to elucidate a theory of sexual interactions. An economic approach to human behavior was defined by (subsequent) Nobel laureate Gary Becker (1976) as having four main assumptions. First, the behavior of individuals is interconnected in market systems in which individual choices are shaped by costs and bene- fits in the context of stable preferences. Second, scarce but desirable resources are allocated by price shifts and other market influences. Third, sellers of goods or ser- vices compete with each other (as buyers also some- times do, but not as much). Fourth, people seek to max- imize their outcomes. Although economists initially focused on material goods and material needs, many have begun to look at nonmaterial goods (such as ser- vices) and nonmonetary media of exchange (such as time or emotion). In adopting such an approach, our theory will therefore be primarily cultural in the sense that it looks at how individual behavior is shaped by the market and other aspects of the collective network, but just as economic exchange is based on what nature has shaped people to want and need, natural motivations 339 Personality and Social Psychology Review 2004, Vol. 8, No. 4, 339–363 Copyright © 2004 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. We thank Janet Hyde for comments on an earlier version of this article. Requests for reprints should be sent to Roy F. Baumeister, De- partment of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306–1270 E-mail: baumeister@darwin.psy.fsu.edu Or to Kathleen D. Vohs, Sauder School of Business, Marketing Division, University of British Columbia, 2053 Main Hall, Vancouver, British Columbia V62 1Z2, Canada. E-mail: kathleen.vohs@sauder.ubc.ca