Make love and lose your religion and virtue: Recalling sexual experience undermines spiritual intentions and moral behavior

In contrast with traditional considerations, sexuality is often perceived today as being rather compatible with religion/spirituality and morality. However, there may be some inherent opposition between (a) sexuality (thoughts, affects, pleasure) and (b) religion/spirituality (attitudes, motives) and (interpersonal) morality (dispositions, behavior). The two imply, respectively, self-enhancement vs. self-transcendence, disinhibition vs. self-control, and disgust indifference vs. sensitivity. We hypothesized that sexual experience attenuates spiritual and moral concerns and behaviors. In three online experiments, young adults were asked to recall a personal sexual experience. Compared to a control condition, sexual induction diminished spiritual behavioral intentions (Experiments 1 and 2), in particular among those with high individual disinhibition (Experiment 1), as well as behaviors of prosociality and integrity/honesty (Experiment 3). The effects were independent of individual religiousness/spirituality. These findings suggest that combining sexual pleasure with self-transcendence and moral perfection, even if a legitimate ideal, is not an easy enterprise