Class, Radicalism, and Religious Involvement in Great Britain

permissive white college students are low on church attendance, tend not to believe in romantic love and report falling in love relatively often. The equally permissive Negro students lack these characteristics; their permissiveness seems to be a consequence of a long-standing supporting tradition. This interpretation of the distinction between more and less permissive subcultures is further supported by the contrast between the two extreme groups-Negro men and white women. White women's permissiveness is affected by all the variables investigated; that of Negro men is affected by none of them.21 The theory I have suggested implies that to understand social changes in sexual permissiveness we should study the less permissive groups, for they are most likely to change. To evaluate the efficacy of any variable in affecting sexual permissiveness, one must know the level of permissiveness in the group sampled. Finally, the theory suggests that differences in the area of sexual permissiveness between races are analogous to the differences between sexes; studying one set may well be essential to understanding the other.