'The pattern suggests that plenty of college students think that they don't have sex as much as other people do and aren't as comfortable with uncommited sex as other people are, but generally don't wish to appear so. In other words, many college students are more sexually conservative than they prefer to let on. They're afraid to appear prudish, which strikes many as a social kiss of death.
The results of pluralistic ignorance about others' sex lives, however, can "lead one or both sexual partners to act according to the perceived norm rather than to their own convictions." In other words, sex becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: "The more students believe sexual activity is occuring, the more sexual activity occurs." In a study of over 700 undergraduates, researchers noted that men who considerably overestimated the sexual activity of their male peers were also 11 times more likely to have had sexual intercourse in the last month that were those who underestimated men's sexual activity.'
Mark Regnerus and Jeremy Uecker, Premarital Sex in America, p.119.
