…is not to reproduce, to express love, strengthen bonds, or out of some sense of responsibility. This post is based on a book I was assigned in a class to present next month. I’m also the only male in the class (there are 5 students total – it’s a little seminar), and I’m going to tell these women why they have sex. Should be interesting.
- The original study came up with 237 “distinct” reasons, based on a sample of 203 men and 241 women (ages 17 to 52).
- The 237 reasons were then given to another set of 1,549 undergrads (ages 16 to 42), and a the reasons were listed in order of frequency.
- The book I’m reading is on a study that took the 237 reasons, and asked 1,006 women (ages 18 to 86) from throughout the U.S. and many other countries. 80% were in a relationship, 93% heterosexual, 2% bisexual, and 5% homosexual. 57% considered themselves to be part of a specific religious tradition, 26% agnostic, and 14% atheist.
Before you read any further (or the original studies), take a guess at the following Top 10 lists for why people (both sexes) have sex, based on the second study. See if you can guess which list belongs to which sex. Notice how similar the two lists are, and also the key differences (in blue). The responses that ended up in the same ranking for both sexes are in green.
- I was attracted to the person
- I wanted to experience the physical pleasure
- It feels good
- I wanted to show my affection to the person
- I wanted to express my love for the person
- I was sexually aroused and wanted the release
- I was “horny”
- It’s fun
- I realized I was in love
- I was “in the heat of the moment”
[poll id=”9″]
- I was attracted to the person
- It feels good
- I wanted to experience the physical pleasure
- It’s fun
- I wanted to show my affection to the person
- I was sexually aroused and wanted the release
- I was “horny”
- I wanted to express my love for the person
- I wanted to achieve an orgasm
- I wanted to please my partner
[poll id=”10″]
The book divides up the reasons into 11 categories for women. The #1 reason for women is “the basic biochemistry of attraction.” If that’s the case, what is it that women find sexually attractive?
- Scent. Women rate how someone smells as the MOST important of the senses in choosing a lover, more important than sight. “Women’s sexual arousal is enhanced by good body odors–and killed by bad ones… women can literally smell the scent of a gene complex known to play a key role in immune functioning.”
- Height. Over 6′ is good, but not TOO tall. Tall(ish) men, for example, have a higher SES on average, women report feeling safer with them, and they tend to be healthier.
- Fit. Heterosexual women on average prefer strong, athletic men with a high shoulder-to-hip ratio, and a muscular torso, but NOT muscle-bound. Men may overestimate how much muscle a women wants. Women often don’t want as much muscle on man as men think they do. Also, more muscular men tend to have more sexual affairs. Think Men’s Health rather than Flex.
- Face. Heterosexual women prefer more masculine faces for casual sexual encounters, and less masculine faces for long-term relationships. This may be due to the “fact that the more masculine men are less sexually faithful.”
- A Voice like James Earl Jones. Men with sexy voices tend to have a higher shoulder-to-hip ratio, and are judged by women to be healthier, more socially dominant, and well-respected. Women usually prefer these voices more for short-term encounters, however.
- Humor and Confidence. Women view these as the two most important personality characteristics related to attractiveness. Married women who think their husbands are witty are more satisfied!
- Similarity. “Opposites attract” is the exception for long-term relationships. Having a partner with similar values or beliefs is validating. Might this make married LDS couples less likely to leave the church?
- One’s “type.” Every women has unique and subtle differences, based in early childhood and adolescence.
Can men do anything about their attractiveness?
Which of these characteristics are most important to you?
Discuss.
Wheat & Tares 
Looks like the man your man could smell like is onto something.
^I wish I could like comments more than once.
That comment deserves an award salty. Maybe Old Spice knew about this research…
I voted opposite to most because I think men actually have greater illusions regarding helpless love than most women.
I think I definitely find scent high on the attractive qualities scale, and similarity to me would be close behind. I like more Nordic looks (read slightly chubbier, taller, and red/blonde) over “tall, dark and handsome”. But I’m in the same skin color family as swans and polar bears, so there you have it.
But when I married, he fit none of the qualities I generally find attractive. So I might not be the best woman to ask, either.
What attracted me to him was how he treated me. None of the other superficial things mattered against that. I didn’t find out until later that was all a lie.
Most women are probably unaware of it, but from what I’ve observed, I think the “please come fix me, I’m broken” works with a LOT of women, particularly mid-single LDS women.
By the way, the link to the study appears to be bad right now. It should direct here.
Er, I meant here.
Thanks Peter – I fixed it.
One thing that some of this kind of glosses over is intimate partner violence- which is unfortunately highly relevant to the selection of sexual partners for women.
I think humor and wit rate so highly because they serve as (often inadequate) proxies for how dangerous a man will be to his partner. Abusive men tend to be highly insecure and most threatened by the idea of being laughed at. It isn’t the most effective screening method because many men are able to project confidence and mask their insecurities long enough to get into a serious relationship.
Wow, I just pulled a serious Debbie Downer. Either way, I know that I have always felt safest with men who like to make me laugh.
Will you be divulging which list goes with which sex?
Seems to indicate that, in the psychology of sexual activity, men and women aren’t nearly as different as traditional cultural assumptions suggest (ie, “men pursue love for sex, and women pursue sex for love”).
Derek – yeah, I will this afternoon… and I agree with you, in the sense that assumptions in this case aren’t always on… in many ways men and women are very similar sexually, while in other ways they are different. Fact is though, both men and women mainly have sex for the same basic reasons.
All I know is that when James Earl Jones talks, I listen.
Yeah, James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman too.
I think the sex/love dichotomy has more to do with what makes a person want sex, not why they have sex. They’re similar, but not really the same.
I would like to see this study separated into married and not. I don’t particularly identify with these lists. I am quite convinced that my single sisters’ reasons for having sex are vastly different than mine, since they don’t have long term relationships. Also, even people “in a relationship” might be 3 weeks into a relationship so their reasons for having sex might be quite different than a 20 year marriage after having 4 kids but we still have sex 3 times a week.
It was interesting to recently talk with my sister about it and she only has sex with new partners and I have only had sex a very long term partner so it is very different.
Yeah, I think studying on long-term and/or married couples would probably change things – it would be a new study entirely, “Why Married Women Have Sex” or something
Actually what is more applicable to me being different that most women in the study is that as a Mormon woman aged 40, I have had only married sex with one partner. Most other women in the survey would be referring to the times that they had sex in their life and it would probably include many times when they were single. So even if they were in a married/long term relationship now, they would still be answering questions about why they had sex with some random guy at that party in college, or why they had sex with that guy they had a crush on forever but they didn’t think things would work out long term but when for it anyway.
That’s the problem with these general studies – they are interesting overall but limited in terms of specific application, e.g. with a BIG sample size of over 1000, there were still only 20 who were bisexual. Surely 20 bisexual women from around the world is not a big enough sample to represent all bisexual women.
Yes, I can imagine that there might be a difference between singles and those in a relationship, and those in a short relationship vs a long relationship. Of course, men are just as likely to be different when separated out into those different categories, and similar to women in similar categories, no?
And in addition to the above comment I made, I might be persuaded to break my temple convents if Johnny Depp is involved, but since that’s highly unlikely I guess that’s a question that I will never have to answer. Just saying
The slim majority had it right – the first list is women, the second list is men.
I thought it was interesting that more women than men “wanted to please their partner” – but also how similar both lists are.
The reason married women have sex: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOohBytKTU
This goes for men, also. The problem is that it is really hard to smell anyone these days. Men use anti-perspirants and deodorants to cover up their scent and women completely shave off the armpit hair plus use anti-perspirants and deodorants. That, and both sexes add additional scents on top in the form of chemical perfumes and colognes.
The easiest, quickest way to attract a man is to flash some armpit hair. It is designed to draw the eye’s attention. The hair follicle itself, embedded into the skin, is designed (when it moves) to stimulate the glands beneath, so that pheromones are released. It is this chemical scent that attracts.
The pheromonal scent on a woman changes during the month, depending upon whether she is fertile. When fertile, the scent becomes sweeter.
For men the scent remains constant, but changes in intensity, based on various factors.
Every man and woman has a distinct odor. Young women smell floral and slight, older women richer and stronger.
The response is the same in both men and women. If a man takes his shirt off and allows his armpit hair to be seen and his scent to be smelled (not that of chemicals), there will be a physiological response in the females around him regardless of whether he is their “type.” It is merely that he smells like a man and it is man that woman likes. The same goes for a male, when seeing and smelling a woman, it triggers a response in him.
Once a woman or man acts on the attraction, the specific scent is linked to the attraction, and all that is needed to re-initiate the sex response is to allow the scent to be smelled again. So, for example, in the case of my wife, all I need to do is lean over her with my shirt off and allow her to smell my pits and voila!, she is instantly horny. Or, I can tell when she is fertile by merely sniffing her pits.
Of course, none of this works if the body odors are masked with chemicals, if the hair is shaved clean (which doesn’t allow the follicle to move below the skin surface) or if the person has just emerged from a bath or shower, which removes bodily scents (for a time.)
“If a man takes his shirt off and allows his armpit hair to be seen and his scent to be smelled (not that of chemicals), there will be a physiological response in the females around him”
Yeah, a similar physiological response experienced when putting your hand down the garbage disposal to fish out who-knows-what, or having to sort laundry containing someone else’s sweaty socks.
Yuck.
Re Hawkgrrrl
Seriously, hawk, I love you to death! You make my day brighter.
“All I know is that when James Earl Jones talks, I listen.”
According to this study, the ideal man is Darth Vader wearing Drakkar Noir: he’s tall, dark, handsome, has a pronounced chin, and he has a deep voice eerily similar to James Earl Jones. And though he rarely cracks a joke, he’s outwardly very confident. Also, he’s got a Johnny Cash, man-in-black, fashion sense.
#23 SilverRain: Lol.
We are all conditioned to smelling chemicals on our bodies. Because of this, the scent of an actual human takes some getting used to.
Chuck Norris is the #1 reason why women have sex.
#27 …..um….huh?
They want to be good at it in case Chuck Norris wants to get with em. Practice makes perfect.
jks – http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/