The Swinger Test

Ok, reading JDavisAuto's thread here: The Sport of Swinging

Got me wondering, if you were to put together a "swinger test" to determine if a couple would be "good swingers" or even "good at swinging" what would the questions be? And what would the "RIGHT" answers be?

For example in his thread he mentioned that the one he saw had the question "How many times a week do you have sex?" with the correct answer seeming to be 5 or more.

The first question that comes to my mind is, Do you have an adventurous spirit?

I think the common denominator of all the fun swingers we've encountered has been a sense of adventure. They go into an opportunity optimistic and expecting fun surprises.

The answers really don't matter except the last one. I have no idea where these questions came from, and if I had my own sex club, I don't think I'd have a questionnaire -- Maybe just tryouts. (OK, just kidding about that last one!)

1. Do you like sex?

2. Are you really ready to meet another couple or single?

3. Have you ever been kicked out of a swinger's club for any reason?

4. Do you like to use sex toys during playtime? Extra points for owning a Sybian and a sex swing

5. Are either of you bi-sexual? Who?

6. Do you shave your genitals?

7. Do you have implants? Breast or penile?

8. Do have any tattoos?

9. Have you ever had to "break up" with another couple?

10. Can the female part of the couple ejaculate? Extra points if yes

11. Have you ever picked up a couple or single at a vanilla bar?

12. What is your usual attire when you attend swinger parties?

13. Do you have a fetish? Are you into BDSM?

14. Do you watch Dr. Phil? If the answer is yes, please put the pencil down and leave these premises now.

The first question I would want answered goes something like this: "Do you get aroused imagining yourself helping someone of your own gender get your spouse off?"

That seemed to be what I needed to know. The first time I watched Mrs. Ekies fuck another man the way she fucks me gave me my answer...I'm a swinger to the bone.

Seems to me, the questions that should be answered first are:

Do you need to have "feelings" for someone before you can consider having sex with them?

Do you have issues with being naked with other people, including people you either dont know or hardly know?

Have you ever actually expereinced a "swinging" experience.. Lots of people may want to BS thier way thru, which this question is easy to lie about..

In my test I would have only one question.

1. Do you want to have sex with me?

A. Yes

B. Yes

End of test.

You know I started to do this, for the men only, but I give up (had about 6 questions).

The problem isn't that the answer would be 'are you good for swinging' but 'are you like Mr. Chicup'.

Far too many variations and touchy areas.

This is my first post on the board.

I used to be a research psychologist specialising in the design of psychometric tests so posts on tests to measure anything about swingers e.g. will they be any good when playing or their Myers-Briggs profile, interest me a great deal.

My personal interest would be to develop an 'innocent' test to identify potential swingers. For example a question about attitudes to thrill activities like bungee jumping or motorbike riding would be helpful because it seems most swingers are heavily into such things. If a vanilla person is also into thrill activities then chances are they could be or could become swingers too.

Naturally the test would be more accurate if it consists of many such questions so that the non-swinger correlates cancel and the swinger potential gets distilled in the total score.

What other innocent questions do you think could be asked?

What other innocent questions do you think could be asked?

How do you personally feel about swinging ?

Are you and your wife, swingers ?

There are a few friendly posters here like Arvcpl, who I see as intellegent in this feild. People who can feel out swingers in a vanilla setting.

I am not much good at it personally. I think all the shoppers at wally world swing. My wife keeps me on a leash when we shop, so we dont get arrested. Shes the Smart one... Go figure...

Welcome to the board.

I think you're close with your thought about the correlation between adventurousness and probability of swinging. I see so many variables that a strong correlation is difficult for me to identify.

Here's a thread that may be of interest

The point of my post is to come up with questions that allow you to suss out whether someone is a potential swinger without asking them directly i.e. to avoid the risk associated with such in-your-face approaches. Asking someone if they are a swinger or would be into a 3 some just won't do. I want questions you could ask in a vanilla setting with no one being the wiser as to the real point of the question.

Asking if anyone loves thrill sports is such a question.

My research - I have done a fair amount on the link between personality and sexuality in women - suggests the following traits are associated with an attraction to swinging

- attraction to thrill and adventure activities

- freedom from anxiety, phobias and hypochondiac tendencies,

- being upbeat i.e. not depressive,

- some interest in stereotypically male interests e.g. sport, mechanics, etc without being disinterested in stereotypically female pursuits,

- being intelligent i.e. high IQ, SAT, etc (in Mensa SA the proportion of those with swinger experience or interest is very high)

- being better than most at reconcilling what most see as opposites or being able to see shades of grey rather than everything as a back and white issue,

- not being fundamentalist religious - either not believing or following a liberal denomination

I've been through the swinger personality type poll in detail. It tells me that Intuitive (N) and Judging (J) types are more likely to be swingers.

If I had to sum it all up I would say emotionally stable folk who don't think in black and white terms and who have a taste for adventure are probably worth sounding out with more explictly sexual questions. Safe and predictive questions would be their attitude to porn and prostitution being freely allowed and whether they would skinny dip in mixed company.

Do you think that's reasonable? For those of you with lots of experience does the picture I paint seem accurate?

Any other ideas?

Oh my, a social scientist wanting to bring legitimate study and research into the lifestyle...BE STILL MY RACING HEART!!!!!!

My personal thoughts on this are multi-fold. For starters threads like this and research like this are often based on an assumption that swingers are somehow, "different" than other people in society. When people try to find that 'difference' it often comes up short because when you peel down through all the layers swingers are just people and people are often swingers to one degree or another. I'm not sure any of us are carrying a specific 'swinger trait' or swinger gene.

Your thoughts on attempting to correlate thrill seeking behaviour to swinging is with merit and would definately be an interesting study and I would sure be interested in seeing the results but again I don't know if there will be an actual relationship between the two.

If there is a related trait that may be a bit more pronounced in swinging community as opposed to the vanilla community I suspect it may not so much be about thrill seeking but rather how they view the concepts of risk interrelated with social conformity.

In otherwords, swingers are not necessarily seeking a thrill through swinging per se but rather they have a higher tolerance for taking a social risk. For example if a vanilla is told to not indulge in any kind of sexual experience outside of monogamous marriage because it is not proper and approved of by that community, they will conform to that instruction so as not violate any social norms or customs. Whereas the swinger is willing to take and manage a certain level of risk of social disapproval.

I may have misunderstood fun4D's questions. If you were asking about me the answers are

- I have been into the idea of swinging ever since I first heard of it. I got research articles and anything else I could as soon as I could. I was involved in a marriage with someone who was absolutely opposed to the idea at the time though.

Since then I have remarried and we have started to swing with 2 MMF and 2 couple experiences so far.

Hmmmm. Well, my spouse is an actual practicing/teaching/reasearching social psychologist, so I sent the thread link to him to see what he thought and if he'd post a response.

In the meantime, my thought is that I've not noticed that the swinger population is all that tremendously different than the general population, other than the sex part. You have all income levels, all sorts of careers/occupations/education levels, the whole range of prejudice and the like. So basically, like IAPR said, I've not seen this in-your-face swinger trait.

Personally speaking, I would be an outlier on your proposed test. I wouldn't call myself a thrill seeker, even though I do have a motorcycle endorsement, drive aggressively and like roller coasters. I am a horrific worrier and overthinker. I wouldn't say I'm depressive, but upbeat would not be a descriptor you'd hear from my friends. I am definitely a black/white person who has to work extremely hard to consider the shades of gray to reach compromise. The friends who do know my non-vanilla interest have expressed some surprise that a rather rigid traditionalist/conservative like me does step outside the monogamy box. I do like sports, and am not religious, but that describes 3/4 of my female friends who don't swing, though, and would never consider it. Yet, I'm pretty damn happy in my open marriage with a continued high interest in swinging possibilities and going to the club, etc.

I don't know... as the spouse of a researcher, I could say it might be of interest, but I have to wonder if you are really going to be able to isolate a difference between those who swing and the general population based on these kinds of questions.

A couple questions for megauxurious.

Being from South Africa you may have some very significant cultural, religious and legislative law differences than in the United States or even western Europe and that may affect both your perceptions as well as those taking your tests.

As I admit to being completely uninformed on standard sexual mores and social customs in South Africa could you please answer a few questions for us regarding social norms of South Africa as they relate to sex and swinging.

-What is the standard socially approved form of sexual expression? (I'm assuming abstinant untill marriage, then monogamous marriage then celibate after the death of spouse as it is here in the states)

- What are the standard cultural views on any form of sex outside of monogamous marriage? ie premaritial sex, adultry etc

- What are the standard cultural views on swinging? Is it even legal? Is it viewed as a horrendous abomnation or is accepted to one degree or another? What are the views of sex with more than one person at a time such as threesomes, couples/couples or group sex/orgys?

In other words share with us about where you are coming from culturally and educate us a little bit on what swinging is to you and your culture.

I'm thinking that while the topic is very interesting, that the cultural differences may skew the results and interpretations fairly significantly.

megauxurious said:

If I had to sum it all up I would say emotionally stable folk who don't think in black and white terms and who have a taste for adventure are probably worth sounding out with more explicitly sexual questions. Safe and predictive questions would be their attitude to porn and prostitution being freely allowed and whether they would skinny dip in mixed company.

 

Do you think that's reasonable? For those of you with lots of experience does the picture I paint seem accurate?

 

Any other ideas?

I agree with the first sentence. I like some porn...some I like A LOT!

I think prostitution should be safe, legal and highly regulated. HOWEVER, I would rather stick sharp objects in my eyes before I ever went skinny dipping and it wouldn't matter in the slightest who was around at the time.

I love a good orgy and I have no problem with sexual nudity but I wouldn't go skinny dipping in the buff for anything. I have no interest in nude beaches, nude resorts and if I could find a way to shower fully dressed I would

I guess no matter how enlightened we think we are, we all have our own hangups.

rpu3 sent a link to this thread for my perusal and opinion. While psychometrics is not my primary area of study, I am getting up to speed quickly in this domain; I am developing a new course in Personnel Selection for spring quarter. So, I have been spending quite a bit of time researching the use of questionnaires for employment screening.

A couple of thoughts regarding a potential swinger screening instrument:

1. A well-designed (and tested) instrument could be used to develop a profile of the average swinger using aggregate data. Unfortunately, using this instrument to assess an individual's potential for swinging is problematic as is always the case when one goes from the aggregate to the individual. Put simply, any instrument assesses an extremely limited number of traits; individuals are a very complex interaction of an almost infinite set of traits.

2. It is hard for me to imagine how one would persuade participants to complete the instrument. Kind of like, "Hello, would you mind filling out this questionnaire because, well, because... oh, nevermind, just fill it out."

3. Typically, those screened out by questionnaire results are then not "employed" or in this case would not be queried about the possibility of swinging, so the actual suitability of those screened out is never tested.

4. I am not sure thrill-seeking is a useful construct in this case. For example, wouldn't cheating develop more of a thrill than swinging?

5. Another seemingly applicable construct, let's say, an assessment of conventionality, might seem useful. It is easy to assume that swingers are less conventional than non swingers. And yet, a great deal of time is spent on this board discussing and developing rules, boundaries, and conventions to ensure that one's swinging experiences are positive.

6. The development of any psychometric instrument requires a relatively large sample--rarely is one fortunate enough to develop a useful instrument on the first attempt. Many revisions are typically required and the number of participants can be quite high to enable the researcher to develop a useful (predictive) instrument.

In all, while the idea makes for interesting conversation, the practicality of actually developing such an instrument for such limited use seems to not stand up well to any reasonable cost/benefit analysis. If I were to undertake this project, I would plan for at least 5 exploratory iterations of the instrument and then plan to follow up with a final confirmatory test. I would probably allow 2 years or so to develop such an instrument. Bear in mind I have access to quite possibly the largest research university participant pool in the world. Even with that advantage, I would not expect to develop even a passable instrument in less than 2 years.

And once that instrument was developed, I am not sure that it would meaningfully enhance one's ability to vet potential swinging partners in the "vanilla" population beyond the methods one already employs.

Big words, hurt little brain....

And once that instrument was developed, I am not sure that it would meaningfully enhance one's ability to vet potential swinging partners in the "vanilla" population beyond the methods one already employs.

Yeah, it's a lot more efficient just to ask someone if they want to get naked. Either they do or they don't.

Thanks so much for all the thoughtful responses.

A number of responses seem to imply that I think swingers are neatly different in some way from the general population. That isn't the case. I am fully aware that every type of person can be found in the swinger community but statistically some traits are more common among swingers than they are in the general population. No questionnaire will be a perfect predictor and even extreme scores will be wrong sometimes but I think it may be possible to do at least 50% better than chance. I know it is much better to find swingers on sites or clubs but if you are to approach people in vanilla settings a guide that improves your odds way above chance has be to useful.

With respect to thrill seeking being more related to cheating my study shows cheating is uncorrelated to thrill and adventure seeking. So I am sticking with the suggestion that a love of thrill and adventure does increase the chance the person will be keen on swinging.

I'm convinced being smart raises the odds considerably too. I'm really keen on feedback on that observation.

Swingers are probably also taller than average - by as much as 2 inches.

Sexual mores in white SA aren't really different to those in the USA but it wouldn't make much difference if they were because even though I have done some research on local groups but I rely quite a lot on papers based on US samples. I disagree that no premarital sex is the norm in either country. The vast majority have premarital sex. Sex before marriage is clearly the norm - whatever the church says - even among church goers. I think swinging is legal here but it is still deeply frowned upon - like being gay really but even more so.

Maybe I should have raised one trait at a time. It seems that this discussion is getting too messy and complicated.

I think we have already developed our own test -

The Swinger Test

megauxurious said:

I disagree that no premarital sex is the norm in either country. The vast majority have premarital sex. Sex before marriage is clearly the norm - whatever the church says - even among church goers. I think swinging is legal here but it is still deeply frowned upon - like being gay really but even more so.

If you are referring to my questions, I did not say that no premarital sex was the "norm." I stated abstinence until marriage was the standard socially approved form of sexual expression. I agree premarital sex is the norm but it is not approved by any social institution. It is definitely a case of not practicing what is being preached.

iapr I suppose I understood you as implying the explicit stand of social institutions has some moral force. I believe it doesn't because everyone knows its hypocritical - including the institutional preachers.

I don't know about the US - but I suspect it is the same as SA - but even the institutions don't preach abstenance with one voice. It seems to me only conservative protestant churches do. That's just my impression - not the result of a proper survey.

Still my finding that thrill and adventure seeking is related to swinging is not limited to my culture. It is based not only on my research here but also on sensation seeking research around the world which repeatedly makes the connection. So much so that swinging is one of the questions in the best established sensation seeking scale.