Blooming Sexuality: A Biopsychosocial Perspective on Adolescent Romantic and Sexual Development

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation was to examine adolescent romantic and sexual development, in a biopsychosocial model, in which physical, psychological, and social contextual factors are considered. The findings of this dissertation show the importance of individual factors such as pubertal status and timing, and personality in (risky) sexual behavior. Specifically, the findings show that adolescents with a more advanced pubertal status, and earlier pubertal timing engaged in more (risky) sexual behavior during adolescence. Further, the findings show personality differences in sexual behavior, casual sexual behavior, and risky sexual behavior at baseline, but not in the rate of sexual development over time. In addition, the role of peers and media in interaction with individual factors was examined. The findings show that puberty affects boys and girls differently, both in peer social status and romantic and sexual involvement. Further, the findings show that adolescents selected friends based on similarity in sexual intention—only for low emotionally stable adolescents. These findings stress the importance of not studying adolescent sexuality in isolation from peers and friends, and of including individual factors such as personality that may moderate the impact of peers. To broaden our focus on adolescent development with a more distal factor, sexualized media was included as a potential correlate of adolescents’ permissive sexual attitudes. The findings show that the mutually correlated development of sexualized media consumption and permissive sexual attitudes was stronger for those adolescents who perceived sexualized media to be more realistic. Finally, well-being of sexual minority adolescents and young adults was examined, with minority stress as an important predictor of sexual minority youth’s well-being. The findings show that minority stress was related to LGB youth feeling more like a burden to the people around them and that this higher level of perceived burdensomeness was, in turn, related to higher levels of depression and suicidal ideation. The findings also show that being involved in a romantic relationship can protect sexual minority youth from the negative impact of expected rejection on their psychological well-being. These findings stress the importance of examining underlying mechanisms that may help explain the relation between minority stress and mental health disparities among LGB youth, and to extend research to include potential buffers of the impact of minority stress. The findings in the current dissertation emphasize the importance of including both physical and psychological factors such as pubertal development and personality in research. Moreover, the findings of this dissertation show that it is vital to consider the peer- and media context in which adolescents often have their first romantic and sexual experiences. As such, factors related to adolescents’ agency in their own development, as well as social factors that stimulate or discourage a healthy sexual development (e.g., supportive peer relations and agency-stimulating cultural norms around sexuality) need to be included in future research.