“There was a big disconnect between what people said their sexual orientation was and what their actions were.”Ĭollege is the time when sexual evolutions and experiments are likely to take place because students have often reached their sexual maturity, but not their emotional and economic maturity (as evidenced by the fact that many college students are in debt and making plenty of foolish decisions). “Not everybody who has same-sex relationships is secretly gay,” says co-author Arielle Kuperberg, Ph.D., director of Undergraduate Studies in Sociology at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who has written extensively on student relationships. One in 4 women and 1 in 8.5 men in college whose most recent hookup was with a partner of the same sex consider themselves straight. Through a survey of more than 24,000 university students, researchers found that many people engaging in same-sex hookups identify as heterosexual. New research out today in Archives of Sexual Behavior, given as an exclusive to, shows that the labels “gay” and “straight” aren't always definitive.
