Sexual Polarity Scale (SPS)

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Pornography is disgusting. or (b) So-called pornography can be enjoyable.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) The most important aspect of science is that it enables man to realize himself by gaining understanding and control of the world around him. or (b) The most important aspect of science is that it enables man to separate the true from the false, the right from the wrong, reality from fantasy.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) To assume that most people are well-meaning brings out the best in others. or (b) To assume that most people are well-meaning is asking for trouble.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Abandoning yourself to pleasure helps to produce orgasmic response. or (b) Sexual abandonment endangers the person’s ability to control his or her own body.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) No government should sanction legalized gambling. Ultimately this will undermine the very foundations of authority. or (b) Legalized gambling is at worst innocuous. At best it lends spice and zest to life.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) What children demand should be of little consequence to their parents. or (b) What children demand, parents should take seriously and try to satisfy.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) The most important thing in the world is to know yourself and be yourself. or (b) The most important thing in the world is to try to live up to the highest standards.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) The sin of fornication can be a worse crime than murder. or (b) It is better to make love than to fight.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Homosexual teachers have no necessary affect on children’s personality sexual orientation. or (b) Homosexual teachers can corrupt a young mind.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Sexual fantasy is a way for a person to increase their erotic pleasure through the use of imagination. or (b) Too much thinking about sex is a sign of an impure mind that will be easy prey to sexual temptation.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Sex undermines the distinction between humans and animals, making people more bestial. or (b) Sex affirms the essential similarity of all of nature’s creatures.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Juvenile delinquency is simply a reflection of the basic evil in human beings. It has always existed in the past and it always will. or (b) Juvenile delinquency is due to factors we do not understand. When we do understand these we will be able to prevent it in the future.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) When man faces death he learns how basically insignificant he is. or (b) When man faces death he learns who he really is and how much he loved life.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Pornography pollutes the senses, the self, and the society. or (b) Erotica arouses the senses, frees the self, and purges false prudery from society.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) The child molester deserves society’s help, treatment, and rehabilitation. or (b) The child molester should receive their just deserts-punishment.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Scientific knowledge provides the best guide to leading a satisfying sex life. or (b) The Bible and religious leaders provide the best guide to leading a moral sex life.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Pornography is protected by the freedom of speech clause in the First Amendment. or (b) Pornography should not be protected by the First Amendment because it creates a clear and present danger to society.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) The important thing in science is to be right and make as few errors as possible. or (b) The important thing in science is to strike out into the unknown-right or wrong.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Sexually explicit materials can be used in the classroom to educate young people about the facts of human sexuality. or (b) The danger of sex education in the classroom is that it will corrupt the minds of young people who are open to immoral influences.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Nudity at public beaches endangers the well-being of the young. or (b) Nudity at public beaches can lead to an appreciation of the human body as part of nature.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Great achievements require first of all great imagination. or (b) Great achievements require first of all severe self-discipline.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Engaging in a single homosexual act does not necessarily mean the person has, or will adopt, an identity as a homosexual. or (b) Engaging in a single homosexual act identifies a person as homosexual.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Although child pornography is distasteful, its influence is overrated. or (b) If child pornography is permitted in any form, civilization, as we know it, is doomed.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) If human beings were really honest with each other, there would be a lot more antipathy and enmity in the world. or (b) If human beings were really honest with each other, there would be a lot more sympathy and friendship in the world.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Leaders in the public eye have no special moral obligations-they are fallible like all humans. or (b) Sexual morality is necessary in our clergy, government officials, and teachers to uphold the standards of society.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) The beauty of theorizing is that it has made it possible to invent things which otherwise never would have existed. or (b) The trouble with theorizing is that it leads people away from the facts and substitutes opinion for truth.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Sometimes abortion is the best choice available to a young, unmarried woman. or (b) Abortion is immoral because it takes a human life.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Sex education in the schools, including teaching about contraception, is the most effective way to reduce teenage pregnancies. or (b) Sex education in the schools threatens to undermine the authority of the family and the morality of the community.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) People should wash their hands and genitals after engaging in sexual relations. or (b) Washing after sex destroys the relaxed mood that is created since it implies that sex is dirty.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) The loss of control during sexual intercourse heightens orgasmic and interpersonal fulfillment. or (b) Sexual intercourse and orgasm resemble having an epileptic fit, lacking the gracefulness and beauty of more refined social interaction.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Imagination leads people into self-deception and delusions. or (b) Imagination frees people from the dull routines of life.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Thinking is responsible for all discovery and invention. or (b) Thinking keeps people on the straight and narrow.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Observing the world accurately enables human beings to separate reality from imagination. or (b) Observing the world accurately provides a human being with constant excitement and novelty.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Some people can only be changed by humiliating them. or (b) No one has the right to humiliate another person.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Sex is so powerful that it alters your moral character, making you more like your partner. or (b) Sex has no more power to alter personality or character than any other form of social interaction.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) The wages of sexual sin is death. or (b) The wages of sexual guilt is sexual inhibition.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Marital sex can remain exciting if the couple is imaginative and uninhibited. or (b) Marriage is a good remedy for sexual temptation.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Those who err should be forgiven. or (b) Those who err should be corrected.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Consenting sex is a worthwhile moral end. or (b) Too often, sex leads people to relate to one another as means rather than as ends.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Oral and anal sex are more depraved than sexual intercourse. or (b) Oral and anal sex are as morally acceptable as intercourse as long as the couple agrees.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Any position a couple wants to use during intercourse is normal because preferences for positions vary from culture to culture. or (b) There are natural and unnatural positions for men and women to use during sexual intercourse.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Whenever a person has difficulty in deciding which of two things to do he should do that which will give him the greatest satisfaction. In the long run that will be the right choice. or (b) Whenever a person has difficulty in deciding which of two things to do he should do what he ought to do, whether it gives him satisfaction or not.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) All of sex is natural, without necessarily having any cosmic or religious significance. or (b) Marital sex, and only marital sex, is sacred-to be regarded with wonder.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Human sex was set apart forever from animal sex by the divine act that created the human soul. or (b) Human sex is similar, biologically and behaviorally, to sex in primates like the apes.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Anger should be directed against the oppressors of mankind. or (b) Anger should be directed against those revolutionaries who undermine law and order.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Masturbation is a normal sexual behavior that has produced needless worries. or (b) At best, masturbation must be controlled; at worst, it is a sinful waste of human seed.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Familiarity, like absence, makes the heart grow fonder. or (b) Familiarity breeds contempt.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) Reason is the chief means by which human beings make great discoveries. or (b) Reason has to be continually disciplined and corrected by reality and hard facts.

Choose the option closest to your view: (a) The changeableness of human feelings is a weakness in human beings. or (b) The changeableness of human feelings makes life more interesting.