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Social Media Use and Openness to “Sugar Relationships”: Cultural Tightness–Looseness as a Moderator Across 22 Countries

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: Social media use has been widely linked to sexual attitudes, yet it remains unclear whether its association with openness to sugar relationships is uniform across countries or contingent on country-level normative contexts. In the present study, we examined whether country-level cultural tightness-looseness moderated the relationship between social media use and openness to sugar relationships across 22 countries. Openness to sugar relationships was conceptualized as a manifestation of a broader orientation toward sexual-economic exchange. Using data from 22,292 adult women drawn from a large cross-national dataset, we tested this framework with Bayesian multilevel modeling. Measurement invariance of the openness construct was assessed, and alignment procedures were applied to address cross-country non-invariance prior to analysis. Cultural tightness-looseness was modeled as a country-level moderator of the individual-level association between social media use and openness to sugar relationships, while age was included as a control variable. Results revealed a positive association between social media use and openness to sugar relationships. In addition, this association was modestly stronger in countries characterized by lower normative constraint, suggesting that country-level norm strength may shape the attitudinal relevance of digital exposure. Models including this interaction outperformed alternative specifications that incorporated a range of theoretically plausible country-level covariates, including indicators of digital infrastructure, socioeconomic structure, and internet freedom. Although the interaction effect size was modest, the findings suggest that the attitudinal correlates of social media use vary systematically across countries and highlight the importance of country-level normative contexts in research on sexual-economic openness.

Source: Archives of Sexual Behavior

DOI: 10.1007/s10508-026-03551-w

Authors: Norbert Meskó, Jessica S. Ehlers, Anna Molnár, Hyemin Han

Institutions: University of Pecs, University of Alabama

Language: English

Topic: Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology

Subfield: Clinical Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Good health and well-being

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,090