Which of the following is the human sexual behaviour that follows a social…
2026
Which of the following is the human sexual behaviour that follows a social script that is embedded in societal expectations and norms?
Answer: A. Sexual script — ConceptA script in the social scientific study of behaviour is a socially learned blueprint for conduct: it supplies the expected sequence of an activity —…
- A.
Sexual script
- B.
Gender script
- C.
Intrapsychic script
- D.
Interpersonal script
Attempted by 4 students.
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: A
Concept
A script in the social scientific study of behaviour is a socially learned blueprint for conduct: it supplies the expected sequence of an activity — who may take part, what is done, when, where and why — before any individual acts. Gagnon and Simon (1973) applied this idea to sexuality and named the blueprint that organises human sexual conduct the sexual script, arguing that such conduct is learned from culture rather than driven purely by instinct.
Script theory then distinguishes three levels at which that blueprint operates: the cultural scenario (society-wide norms and expectations), the interpersonal level (what partners negotiate inside an encounter) and the intrapsychic level (private fantasy, desire and inner dialogue).
Application
The stem specifies human sexual behaviour that follows a social script embedded in societal expectations and norms. That description matches the sexual script: the socially supplied guidance for sexual conduct that a person absorbs through socialisation from family, peers, religion, education and media, and then enacts as though it were natural.
Because the stem names the blueprint for sexual behaviour as a whole and locates its source in societal expectations and norms, the answer is the umbrella construct of script theory, not one of its internal levels and not a blueprint for some other domain of conduct.
Contrast
Term | What the term names |
|---|---|
Sexual script | The socially learned blueprint for sexual conduct as a whole, drawn from societal expectations and norms |
Gender script | Learned expectations about how a person of a given gender should look, speak and take roles in everyday social life |
Intrapsychic script | The private, internal level of sexual scripting — fantasy, desire and inner dialogue within one individual |
Interpersonal script | The negotiated, in-the-moment level between partners — the shared cues and responses of one specific encounter |
Cross-check: an intrapsychic script sits inside the person and an interpersonal script sits inside a single encounter, so neither can be the society-wide blueprint the stem describes; a gender script governs gender-role conduct rather than sexual conduct. The society-level blueprint for sexual behaviour is the sexual script, and in Gagnon and Simon’s scheme its society-wide layer is called the cultural scenario.