New study challenges the idea that sexual consent is widely misinterpreted in romantic relationships

Romantic partners are generally accurate in perceiving each other’s sexual consent, challenging the assumption that sexual consent is frequently misunderstood. This research was published in Sex Roles.

Sexual consent encompasses a person’s internal willingness to engage in sexual activity, the ways that willingness is expressed through verbal and nonverbal cues, and how those signals are interpreted by others. Internal consent reflects feelings such as comfort, readiness, and desire, whereas external consent involves the communication of willingness or boundaries through words and behavior.

Accurately interpreting these signals is central to healthy sexual decision-making and relationship satisfaction, but how well do people actually understand a partner’s consent?

Xin Shi and Emily A. Impett investigated this question by examining the “sexual miscommunication theory,” which suggests that sexual consent is often ambiguous and therefore prone to misinterpretation, especially by men.

According to this perspective, traditional gender roles portray men as sexual initiators and women as gatekeepers, potentially leading men to overestimate women’s interest. Yet emerging research suggests that romantic partners may be more accurate at interpreting each other’s sexual signals than this theory predicts.

The researchers conducted two studies with mixed-gender romantic couples in China. In the first study, 235 couples (470 individuals) were recruited through online advertisements and social media platforms. Participants were required to be at least 18 years old, in an exclusive relationship, and to have had sexual activity with their partner within the previous three months. Each partner independently completed surveys recalling their most recent sexual encounter.

Participants completed several measures. Internal feelings of sexual consent were assessed using a short form of the Internal Consent Scale, which measured feelings such as comfort and willingness during the encounter. They also rated how strongly they believed their partner experienced these same feelings.

External consent communication was measured using items assessing how participants expressed willingness through verbal or nonverbal cues. Sexual satisfaction with the encounter was measured using the New Sexual Satisfaction Scale, and relationship satisfaction was assessed using items from the Perceived Relationship Quality Components scale.

The researchers used the Truth and Bias model to compare partners’ perceptions with each other’s self-reported experiences in order to determine accuracy and systematic biases in consent perception.

A second study extended these findings using a more ecologically valid design. In this study, 103 couples (206 participants) completed a 21-day daily diary study. Participants received nightly survey links through WeChat and reported on sexual activity and consent experiences each day.

On days when couples reported having sex, participants rated their own internal consent, their perceptions of their partner’s consent, how consent was communicated externally, and their sexual and relationship satisfaction. Across the diary period, over 4,200 daily surveys were completed, with analyses focusing on the approximately 1,650 days when sexual activity occurred.

Across studies, romantic partners were generally quite accurate in perceiving each other’s sexual consent. Men and women were both able to closely track their partner’s internal consent feelings; that is, when one partner reported stronger feelings of willingness or comfort during sex, the other partner’s perception of that willingness tended to increase as well. Participants also tended to project their own feelings of consent onto their partner, meaning that individuals who felt more willing themselves were more likely to assume that their partner felt similarly.

While overall perceptions were accurate, some gender differences appeared: women slightly overestimated their partner’s internal consent, whereas men showed no consistent bias in this regard.

The daily diary study largely replicated these findings in a more naturalistic context. Over the course of the 21-day period, both men and women continued to show strong accuracy in perceiving their partner’s consent from one sexual encounter to the next. However, the direction of some biases differed from the first study.

Men tended to slightly underestimate their partner’s internal consent on a given day, whereas women tended to overestimate it. Participants also showed similar patterns when judging how their partner communicated consent externally. Both men and women were able to track day-to-day changes in how their partner expressed consent through words or behaviors, but women again tended to slightly overestimate the extent to which their partners expressed willingness.

Across both studies, when partners accurately perceived higher levels of their partner’s consent, both individuals tended to report greater sexual satisfaction. Interestingly, some forms of misperception were also associated with relationship outcomes. Overestimating a partner’s willingness was linked to greater sexual satisfaction for the perceiver, while underestimating it was sometimes linked to greater satisfaction reported by the partner.

This research focused on mixed-gender romantic couples in China, which may limit how well the findings generalize to other cultural contexts or to different relationship structures.

Overall, the findings suggest that sexual consent communication in established relationships may be more accurate and mutually understood than traditional miscommunication theories assume.

The research “Reading the Signals: Accuracy and Bias in Men’s and Women’s Perceptions of Sexual Consent in Romantic Relationships” was authored by Xin Shi and Emily A. Impett.