Motivations

When discussing her motivations for studying gender and sexuality, she mentioned how "it occurred to me that every single paper I wrote has someone it's trying to take down or someone I'm mad at. I have sort of an adversarial approach to science, which I actually think is very healthy for science".^[3] Conley also describes the importance of the research she conducts, specifically in terms of consensual non-monogamy, mentioning that "anywhere in the US, an employer can say they're firing you because you're in a consensually non-monogamous relationship, and there's nothing you can do", citing that visibility and challenging stigmas will help move society in the right direction.^[8] Conley's main objective in researching sexuality is to eliminate stigmas surrounding the subject by conducting research that questions societal norms.

Gender differences in sexuality

Conley and colleagues have demonstrated that two of the main reasons women are less likely to accept heterosexual casual sex offers than men are: a) women are stigmatized to a greater extent than men are for participating in casual sex, and b) women anticipate^[9] that they will receive less sexual pleasure in the encounter than men do.

In Conley's study^[5] replicating Clark and Hatfield's 1989 study^[6] mentioned above, she found evidence that negates the gender differences asserted in the original study. Conley found that proposers of casual sex who were men (toward women) were "uniformly seen as less desirable than female sexual proposers",^[5] proving that the gender differences found in Clark and Hatfield's study have more to do with the gender of the proposer than of the study participant. She also found that the only consistent predictor of acceptance of casual sex for both men and women is perceived sexual capabilities, showing that the lower acceptance of casual sex offers by women found in Clark and Hatfield's study had more to do with their perception of the proposer's ability to be good in bed, and less to do with the study participant's gender.

In another study,^[10] Conley and her associates Ziegler and Moors found more proof that the gender differences asserted by researchers and social norms have less to do with inherent gender differences, and more to do with backlash effects and sexual double standards imposed on women by society. Conley et al.^[10] found that the stigma associated with women having casual sex can often decrease the likelihood that they accept casual sex offers. Although casual sex can often be stigmatized for men and women, Conley et al. found that women were "more strongly influenced by fear and stigma".^[10]

Much of Conley's research supports pleasure theory, which Conley describes as the idea that "the pursuit of pleasure is the central force that motivates sexual behavior" for both men and women.^[11] This theory comes from the large pleasure gap in sexual encounters between men and women, where men can expect to have a pleasurable time in most sexual encounters, where women will not always experience pleasure. As previously discussed above, Conley found that the differences found in the 1989 Clark and Hatfield study had more to do with “women’s perception that their heterosexual casual sex partners will be unlikely to give them pleasure”, than gender differences in casual sex interest.^[11] She also conducted research on bisexual women that showed this to be true - these bisexual women were far more likely to accept a casual sex offer from a woman than a man, due to their perceived ability to pleasure the participant.^[11]

Relatedly, Conley has investigated the role that orgasm plays in reactions to casual sex. Piemonte, Conley & Gusakova (2019), found that, despite stereotypes of women being less satisfied and more distressed by their casual sex experiences than men, gender differences in response to casual sex encounters evaporate when controlling for whether the participant had an orgasm during the casual sex encounter.^[12]

Monogamy and its alternatives

In her research on monogamy and its alternatives, Conley demonstrated that, despite widespread acceptance of the notion that monogamous relationships are superior to other non-monogamous arrangements, scant evidence exists in support of this supposition.^[3] Conley calls this phenomenon of seeing monogamy as preferable and inherently better than consensual non-monogamy a 'halo effect".^[13][14] When asked to describe it, Conley defines consensual non-monogamy as "a relational arrangement in which partners agree that it is acceptable to have more than one sexual and/or romantic relationship at the same time".^[15]

In conducting research on consensually non-monogamous relationships, Conley found that people in consensually non-monogamous (CNM) relationships are more likely to use condoms and use them more correctly than monogamous people who are secretly cheating on their partner.^[3] Conley's research demonstrates that monogamy may not be as protective against sexually transmitted infections as would be expected, given that people in CNM relationships are much more likely to practice safer sex.^[16] Likewise, people in certain types of CNM relationships report higher levels of relational adjustment than those in monogamous relationships.^[17] Sexual satisfaction of those in some types of CNM relationships is also higher than that of individuals in monogamous relationships.^[18]

Discussing the act of researching non-monogamy, Conley describes how she is perceived as a worse scientist because she conducts research that does not confirm stereotypes, and that researchers that do support popular stereotypes are perceived as less biased and better scientists.^[8] She also describes how she is perceived as having a connection to the consensually non-monogamous community because of her research, or that she "just want[s] everyone to be polyamorous", due to the fact that she conducted research that had positive findings about non-monogamy.^[8]