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The present college youth were just entering kindergarten in the early 1970s at the time when parents and educators were becoming increasingly aware of the effect of early socialization on traditional sex-role stereotypes. This was a period of feminist “consciousness raising” and activist legislation against sexual discrimination. The current college generation, growing up in the midst of these significant changes, has matured during the mid-1980s into the first generation of the “new man” and the “new woman.”
It is the purpose of this paper to investigate how recent cultural changes in sex roles and male-female relationships have affected one aspect of male psychological experience: the fantasy life of today's college-age men. Special emphasis will be placed on men's attitudes toward women as these are expressed in fantasy. College men provide a fruitful research population for this subject insofar as daytime fantasies constitute an active and emotionally important part of their mental lives. Various large-scale studies show that late adolescents and youths, more than any other age group, are prolific daydreamers whose fantasy productions are relatively accessible to investigation. Thus Singer and Antrobus (1966, 1975) found that nearly every college student reported daily daydreaming. Giambra (1979) reported similar findings among young men aged 17 to 24, many of whom were habitual daydreamers, or were so absorbed in their fantasy content that it intruded into reality. Not unexpectedly, young men's daydreams concern their future, but equally their past; events involving fear of failure and guilt; and sexual relationships.
An interesting approach to changes in male fantasies can be obtained by reconsidering research studies of college men that were