Ira Leonard Reiss (December 8, 1925 – January 9, 2024) was an American sociologist with primary interests in studying the way society impacts sexual attitudes and behaviors and how people respond to those pressures. He also had interests in the study of gender and family, particularly as they relate to sexuality. He attended Syracuse University for his B.S. degree and the Pennsylvania State University for his M. A. and Ph. D. degrees. His major area in graduate school was sociology and his minor areas were cultural anthropology and philosophy. His doctoral course work in sociology and philosophy was done at Columbia University and his French and German language study was taken at Yale University.
Overview Reiss taught at Bowdoin College (1953–1955), College of William and Mary (1955–1959), Bard College (1959–1961), the University of Iowa (1961–1969) and the University of Minnesota (1969–1996). He retired as Professor Emeritus in June 1996 but his professional work has continued. He has won a number of awards for his research and theory efforts. He was elected President of the International Academy of Sex Research, The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, The National Council on Family Relations and the Midwest Sociological Society. His teaching was ranked in the top segment of the sociology department at both the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota and he was nominated for the University wide distinguished teacher awards at both those Universities. Reiss received an award for mentoring from both the undergraduate students and the graduate students at the University of Minnesota. He wrote 14 books, four monographs and over 150 professional papers.
Reiss died in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on January 9, 2024, at the age of 98.
Professional interests Reiss's major goal was to promulgate a broad view of science and to shape the study of sexuality to fit that pluralistic perspective of scientific work.Reiss, I. L. (1993). The future of sex research and the meaning of science, Journal of Sex Research, 30, 3–11.Exploring the Relation of Values, Power and Advocacy in American Sexual Science. International Journal of Sexual Health, Volume 26, #1, 2014 pp. 1-12. He stressed the importance of building theoretical explanations because he felt that theory opens pathways that enable us to understand and to contain our many sexual problem areas.Macro Theory in Sexual Science, Chapter Four in: John DeLamater and Rebecca Plante (Eds.) Handbook of the Sociology of Sexualities (Springer, 2015) Reiss supported both a sociological and a multidisciplinary approach to sexual phenomena. His major theoretical work is discussed in the parts that follow and involve explanations of premarital sexuality, extramarital sexuality, cross cultural sexuality, and pluralistic sexual values that allow people to promote more rational input into our sexual attitudes and behavior.
Reiss strongly supported the development of a multidisciplinary sexual science field with its own Ph.D. program at one of our major universities. He saw the Ph.D. degree as affording legitimacy to the field of sexual science and enhancing our ability to move the study of sexuality from the role of an orphan in other fields to that of a discipline with its own home and core agenda.
In 2005 Ira and Harriet Reiss founded the Reiss Theory Award for the best social science theory article, chapter or book of the year. The award is jointly sponsored by the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (FSSS) and the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) and is given each year at the annual meeting of SSSS.
Professional work
The Autonomy Theory Reiss established his reputation as a major figure in the social science study of human sexuality in his writings on premarital sexuality. He felt that Alfred Kinsey had focused on the area of behavior and neglected the importance of sexual attitudes and standards. Starting in the late 1950s he developed a scale that measured a person's degree of premarital sexual permissiveness. The scale became one of the most popular scales in the country used in premarital sexual research.Hampe, G.D. & Ruppel H.J. Jr. (1974). Measurement of premarital sexual permissiveness: Comparison of two Guttman scales. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 36, 451-463.Israel Schwartz and Ira L. Reiss, "The Scaling of Premarital Sexual Permissiveness revisited: Test Results of Reiss’s New Short Form Version," Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy, 21 (Summer, 1995), pp. 78-86. The revised short form of the vaginal intercourse scale is still in use.Reiss, I. L. (2011). Reiss premarital sexual permissiveness scale (short form). In Fisher, T., Davis, C., Yarber, W., & Davis, S. (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality related measures. (pp. 509–510). New York: Routledge. He predicted the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s and described how it would change our premarital sexual customs.Reiss, I.L. (1960). Premarital sexual standards in America. Glencoe, Illinois, The Free Press, pp. 235-241. Reiss early on sought to discover what socio/cultural factors altered people's level of premarital sexual permissiveness.Kephart, W. M. (1961). American Sociological Review, 26, 294-295. Review of Reiss's 1960 book: "Premarital Sexual Standards in America."Crokett, H. Jr. (1961). Social Forces, 39, 199-200. Review of Reiss's 1960 book: "Premarital Sexual Standards in America." He received three National Institute of Mental Health research grants (1960–1964) to carry out his studies. To test his scales and his explanations he used a nationally representative sample of the U.S. and also representative samples from two high schools and four colleges.Kephart, W.M. (1968). The Annals., 376, 201-202. Review of Reiss’s 1967 book "The Social Context of Premarital Sexual Permissiveness." His explanation of sexual permissiveness in America stressed the importance of the autonomy of women and of children as a major factor in the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s.Crawford, M. & Popp, D. (2003) Sexual double standards: A review and methodological critique of two decades of research. Journal of Sex Research, 40, 13-26.Walsh, R.H. and Zey-Ferrell & Tolone, W. (1976). Selection of reference group, perceived reference group permissiveness, and personal permissiveness attitudes and behavior: A study of two consecutive panels (1967-71; 1970-74). Journal of Marriage and the Family, 38, 495-507.Vandiver R.D. (1972). Sources and interrelations of premarital sexual standards and general liberality/conservatism, Doctoral Dissertation, Southern Illinois University.Reiss, I.L. (1960). Premarital sexual standards in America. Glencoe, Illinois, The Free Press.Reiss, I.L. (1967). The social context of premarital sexual permissiveness. New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Reiss, I. L. & Miller, B. (1979). Heterosexual permissiveness: A theoretical analysis. In Burr, W., Hill, R., Nye, I., & Reiss, I.L. Contemporary theories about the family: Research based theories. Vol. 1, (pp. 57–100). New York: MacMillan Co. His predictions based on this theory regarding changes in women's sexuality and other changes have largely been supported.Hopkins, K.W. (2000). Testing Reiss's autonomy theory on changes in non-marital coital attitudes and behaviors of U.S. teenagers: 1960-1990. Scandinavian Journal of Sexology, 3, 113-125.Christensen, HT and Gregg, CF (1970) Changing sex norms in America and Scandinavia. Marriage and Family Living, 32, 616-627.Zelnik, M. & Kantner, J.F. (1972) Sexuality, contraception and pregnancy among young unwed females in the U.S. In: The U.S. Commission of Population Growth and the American Future. Demographic and Social Aspects of Population Growth. Vol. 1. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office.Sprecher, S. & Hatfield, E. (1996). Premarital sexual standards among U.S. college students: Comparison with Russian and Japanese students. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 25, 261-288.Stillerman, E.D., & Shapiro, C.M. (1979). Scaling sex attitudes and behavior in South Africa. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 8, 1-14.
Integrating sexual science into family textbooks In 1971 he published his textbook on the family and it became one of the best selling texts in the country and went into four editions.Reiss, I.L. (1971). Family systems in America. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc. (Three other editions were published in 1976, 1980, & 1988).Schneider, D.M. (1972) in American Journal of Sociology, 77, 1252-1253. Review of Reiss's 1971 book "Family Systems in America."Duberman, L. (1972) in Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 1, 552-553. Review of Reiss's 1971 book "Family Systems in America." His textbook brought in premarital, marital and extramarital sexuality and homosexual and heterosexual aspects as well as love and gender factors, much more than any of the other textbooks in the family field had done. His definitions of family and marriage stressed the essential elements of these institutions and contained a wide variety of types of family and marital systems. The text had a cross cultural and historical emphasis and a research and theory base for the explanatory concepts that were developed.
Determinants of extramarital sexual permissiveness In 1980 Reiss and two of his colleagues published a research and theory paper on factors that predicted a person's attitudes towards extramarital sexuality.Reiss, I.L., Anderson, R.E., & Sponaugle, G.C. (1980). A multivariate model of the determinants of extramarital sexual permissiveness, Journal of Marriage and the Family, 42, 395–411.Saunders, J.M. & Edwards, J.N. (1984) Extramarital sexuality: A predictive model of permissive attitudes. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 46, 825-835.Banfield, S. & McCabe, M.P. (2001) Extra relationship involvement among women: Are they different from men? Archives of Sexual Behavior, 30, 119-142. The article won the 1980 Reuben Hill award as the best publication on theory and methods in the family area. The paper was based on the results of studying four nationally representative samples of the U.S. fielded by the National Opinion Research Center. The findings indicated that the degree of intellectual flexibility in a person's thinking and the general acceptance of sexuality as a positive part of life were major direct determinants of the degree of acceptance of extramarital permissiveness. Although less influential, the overall quality of the marital relationship was also important. Reiss has published a scale that can be used to measure extramarital sexual permissiveness.Reiss, I. L. (2011). Reiss extramarital sexual permissiveness scale. In Fisher, T., Davis, C., Yarber, W., & Davis, S. (Eds.), Handbook of sexuality related measures, (pp. 253–255). New York: Routledge.Glass, S.P. & Wright, T.L. (1992). Justifications for extramarital relationships: The association between attitudes, behaviors and gender. Journal of Sex Research, 29, 361-387.Weis, D.l. & Slosnerick, M. (1981). Attitudes toward sexual and nonsexual extramarital involvements among a sample of college students. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 43, 349-358.
The Cross Cultural Sexual Linkage Theory