February is celebrated as LGBTQIA+ History Month in the UK. Two of our ECO students, Juwairiyah Mohammad (BSc Economics and Finance) and Pemma Lama(BSc Economics And Finance With A Year Abroad) joined Oana Borcan, who leads ECO’s Equality and Diversity agenda, in a research conversation. We talked about sexual behaviours and attitudes on campus and how socially appropriate different groups of students are perceived, depending on whether they are male, female, heterosexual or homosexual, white or black. Our conversation was prompted by findings from a recent article published in the Special Issue on Discrimination and Diversity in the Journal of Economic Behaviour and Organization (co-edited by Oana Borcan). Speaking of identity, we also touched upon a less understood category in LGBTQIA+: Asexuality.
Read the full article here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268125001477
Disclaimers: The dialogue below contains topics around students’ sexual behaviours and consent, which may evoke emotional responses depending on individual experiences. Reader discretion is advised. This dialogue has been edited with GenAI for brevity and clarity.
OB: So the article we looked at is “Different norms of sexual activity and consent seeking among college students: Social identity and statistical discrimination.” It’s trying to understand how students perceive sexual behaviour depending on the identity of the person involved (gender, race, sexual orientation) and whether that affects what they judge as socially appropriate.
OB: Does one of you want to summarise what you took as the main question or punchline?
JM: For me, it was about whether behaviour is judged differently depending on who’s doing it. So not just “is this appropriate?” but “is this appropriate coming from this kind of person?”
OB: Yes, exactly. They use vignette experiments: scenarios where students evaluate actions like kissing, saying “I’m really into you,” asking explicitly for sex, or waiting for the other person to initiate, and the identity of the person in the scenario is randomly varied.
JM: And one thing that stood out was that directly asking for sex was often rated as less appropriate than just waiting. That surprised me a bit, because we’re told explicit consent is best practice.
OB: Right. So there’s already a tension there. In some contexts, like a party, being very explicit was judged more negatively than being indirect.
PL: Which shows that norms are still very contextual. It’s not just about consent in principle, it’s about how it’s performed socially.
OB: Yes. And then when identity is layered in, most groups (women, Black students, homosexual students) were rated fairly similarly. But there was one consistent difference.
JM: Heterosexual white males.
OB: Yes. The same action, in the same setting, was rated as less socially appropriate when attributed to a white heterosexual man.
JM: That didn’t really shock me. I think media narratives matter. A lot of high-profile cases about misconduct tend to focus on that demographic, so maybe people internalise that pattern.
OB: That fits with the paper’s explanation using statistical discrimination. When people don’t have individual-level information, they rely on group-level signals. Media coverage can shape those signals.
JM: I had a question,which was in labour markets, statistical discrimination leads to wage gaps. And here in the study, it leads to different social norms. Do you think these are comparable?
PL: I thought about it and I have some ideas. Basically, I said that they are comparable because as you said, in labour markets, it leads to wage gaps. But then for social norms, it leads to more like reputational gaps, if that makes sense. In both cases, individuals are judged. I don’t know how to make sense of this, but employers use group averages to make decisions about individuals, but then here students use stereotypes and group-based beliefs to judge behaviour.
OB: Exactly. Yes. That’s really well put, a reputational gap, right? And that can be very dangerous as well, right? Because it can make everyone out there overly wary.
JM: And that could affect behaviour too. If heterosexual men feel they’re perceived as more likely to behave inappropriately, that might change how they approach dating — maybe being more hesitant, or maybe overcompensating, like spending lots of money on dates and like dating apps.
OB: Yes, the dating market angle is interesting. Identity-based expectations can distort matching outcomes. I don’t know how much you’re following these debates in all podcasts are talking nowadays about how there is a crisis in dating, because a lot of heterosexual males are finding it difficult to find partners. And that’s partly driven by a fear of being typecast as a predator if they start to flirt
JM: I also noticed that homosexual men and women weren’t penalised in the ratings. That was more positive than I expected.
OB: That’s true. The study didn’t find a general penalty attached to sexual minority identities in terms of appropriateness ratings.
PL: Although from personal experience, stereotypes definitely still exist. There’s often this assumption that LGBTQIA+ people are more sexually open or experimental.
JM: Yes, like assuming boundaries are more flexible. I’ve seen people react to lesbian friends as if their orientation is something that could just be changed.
OB: So even if the experiment didn’t show a penalty in ratings, that doesn’t mean stereotypes aren’t operating in other ways, like questioning someone’s boundaries or identity legitimacy.
PL: Exactly. And that connects to what I was saying about asexuality. It often feels like we’re not really seen as part of the community in the same way. When people list LGBTQIA+ identities, they usually think of transgender, bisexual, pansexual, lesbian, gay. Asexuality sometimes gets reduced to “just not being interested in sex.”
OB: You mentioned representation as well.
PL: Yes. I’ve very rarely seen an asexual character portrayed in media. So people don’t really understand what it means. When I mention it, I often have to explain it from scratch. Some asexual people feel strongly part of the LGBTQIA+ community, others don’t, it depends on personal experience. But inclusion isn’t automatic.
OB: Do you think that inclusion can be based on sex positivity: whether one shared value across identities might be respecting your own preferences and other people’s preferences, whether that means being sexually active or no?
PL: Yes, I think sex positivity is a big part of the community overall. For asexual people, it’s not about judging others. It’s just about recognising your own orientation.
JM: Coming back to the article, I think the broader takeaway is that norms aren’t neutral. They’re filtered through identity. The same behaviour is interpreted differently depending on who performs it.
OB: And those interpretations can create unequal reputational effects. Even without explicit hostility, identity categories shape expectations.
PL: Which means that changing behaviour on campus isn’t just about telling people what’s appropriate. It’s also about addressing the assumptions attached to different identities.
OB: Exactly. The paper shows that perceptions of consent and sexual behaviour are not only contextual, but identity-contingent. And that has implications for fairness, inclusion, and policy design.
References:
Hanna Hoover, Erin Krupka, Different norms of sexual activity and consent seeking among college students: Social identity and statistical discrimination, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 235, 2025, 107028, ISSN 0167-2681, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107028.
Banner Image by Lukas Eggers on Unsplash