Inductivist

Do men who cannot get a date take it out on the system? Do they become alienated and politically radical?

Using General Social Survey data, I compared white male virgins 25 years of age or older with other males. (I limited the sample to heteros only). Radicalization could conceivably be to the left or the right, so I calculated the number of men who identified themselves as extremely liberal or extremely conservative (sample size = 7,020) 

Percent extremely liberal
Virgins 2.0
Non-virgins 2.3

Percent extremely conservative
Virgins 4.7
Non-virgins 3.9

Neither of these differences is statistically significant. I see no radicalization here.

Males 18-25, N = 1,243

Females 18-25, N = 1,488

Males 18-25, N = 765

Females 18 -25, N = 886

My last post reported a positive correlation between church attendance and celibacy for both young men and women (ages 18-25). The question of whether religiosity has any influence on one's behavior interests me, so I wanted to look at the relationship a little more closely and generated the top two graphs displayed above.

We see that, for both men and women, going to church nearly every week, if not more often, is associated with a greater likelihood of celibacy (celibates are the red sections of the bar graph) . To be specific, 34% of young men who attend more than once a week are celibate, compared to 12% of those who never go. For women, the respective numbers are 26% and 10%.

So, we see a connection between religiosity and sex, but how about some other domain of morality, say, crime. The bottom two graphs show the relatioship between attending services and being arrested at least once for a crime.

The same kind of pattern holds here. For men, 43% of those who never go to church have been arrested, while only 13% of the most frequent attenders have. The corresponding percentages for females is 14% and 8%.

Religiosity seems to differentiate young men more than women, so there are at least two explanations available. Women might naturally behave better and thus benefit less from religion. Or there might be a self-selection effect going on here where men who attend religious services often are an especially moral bunch among men, while religious women are not as different from their non-religious counterparts.

Whatever be the case, it makes more sense for a woman to find a boyfriend at church than for a man to find a girlfriend. A guy who is always AWOL from church has almost a 50/50 chance of having a record. By contrast, only one out of seven girls who never goes has been arrested.

Predictors of celibacy: As a follow-up to the previous post, I looked for General Social Survey variables that predict that a young person (aged 18-25) is celibate. Below I show trimmed models where independent variables with effects not even close to significance have been removed. These include: size of place, race, athleticism, father's level of education, political orientation, and trust of other people.


Logit coefficients--males, N = 67

Church attendance .265*
IQ .053*
Income -.405*
How healthy -.510
Constant .453

Pseudo-R-squared .373

*p < .10, one-tail test


For young men, the following predict being celibate: frequent church attendance; a high IQ; and less income.

Now for the girls:


Logit coefficients--females, N = 56

Church attendance .282*
IQ .032
Income -.094
How healthy -1.260*
Constant 2.767

Pseudo-R-squared .170

p < .05, one-tail test


Going to church a lot and not being healthy predict that a girl is refraining from sex. More income makes young men more appealing, and high intelligence is probably associated with a lack of the interpersonal skills needed to win over girls, but income and IQ don't matter if you're a girl.