Do you think he only has sex in his head? And here not!
Last reviewed: 16.10.2021
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Previously it was assumed that men think about sex more often than women, but a new study showed that men are no less than the beautiful half of humanity, are occupied with thoughts of other biological needs.
The study discredits a persistent stereotype that men think of sex every seven seconds, which is more than 8,000 thoughts of sex for 16 hours of wakefulness.
"It's amazing how people believe fake statistics, in particular, that men think about sex almost constantly and more often than women," said study author Terry Fisher, a psychology professor at the Mansfield Ohio State University. "If a person were thinking about sex 8,000 times a day, one might assume that he has a sexual drive disorder. "
A study of American scientists involved 163 girls and 120 men, college students aged 18 to 25 years. Of these, 59 were randomized to follow thoughts about food, 61 - about sleep and 163 - about sex. Most of the students were European and identified themselves as heterosexual.
Before the stage of fixing thoughts began, the participants answered some questions. Among them: a sexual survey to measure the positive or negative emotional orientation of sexuality (erotophilia / erotophobia); the sociosexual definition of attitudes towards sex and the tracking of sexual behavior and the level of desires; questionnaire survey of eating habits and sleepiness. They were also asked to estimate how many times on average per day, they would presumably think of sleep, food and sex.
Then the scientists gave each student a device for counting the number of thoughts about sex. It was necessary to find thoughts about sex in any aspect, including, sexual activity of any kind, fantasies and erotic pictures, sexual memories and any stimuli of excitement.
The other two groups of students were instructed in using a device to record thoughts about food, which included: food, hunger, snacks or cooking; and thoughts of sleep, which included dreams of sleep, drowsiness, rest.
"We found that there are not only sex differences in attitudes toward thoughts about sex, but also in relation to thoughts about sleep and food," said Fisher. "This means that men can have more of these thoughts than women, or they have there is more free time to identify these thoughts. "
Male participants recorded from 1 to 388 daily thoughts about sex, compared to women's thoughts about sex - from 1 to 140 times a day.
The average number of young people's thoughts about sex was almost 19 times a day. Women in the study, on average, reported 10 thoughts of a sexual nature per day.
Men also thought during the day about food almost 18 times in and 11 times about sleep, compared with the thoughts of women: 15 and 8 times, respectively.
When all thoughts were taken into account in statistical analysis, the difference between men and women in their average number of daily thoughts about sex was no more than the gender differences between thoughts of sleep or eating.