The role of medical students' stereotype of physicians in sex education.

The way a medical student perceives the sexual attitudes of physicians may affect what is learned from medical school sex education and the manner in which such learning is applied later with patients. Medical students' personal sexual attitudes, their projections of physicians' and patients' attitudes, and the actual attitudes of a random sample of physicians were compared by analyzing data from a modified version of the Sex Knowledge and Attitude Test, as completed by 136 sophomore and 43 senior (control group) medical students and 91 practicing physicians. The medical students believed physicians were more sexually ignorant and more conservative about masturbation than themselves but anticipated similar values about abortion and heterosexuality. In reality, the students were more conservative than physicians about abortion, were more liberal than physicians about masturbation and premarital and extramarital sex, and recognized more sexual misinformation. Students anticipated that physicians and patients maintain vastly different sexual attitudes, wherein patients were thought to be extremely sexually ignorant and conservative. These patterns of stereotypes were true for both sophomore and senior medical students, and the sex education course had virtually no impact on these trends. The relevance of student stereotypes for sexual health counseling is discussed.