According to a story in the last issue of Psychological Science:
… for most women, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to both men and women. For men, however, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to only one sex or the other, depending on the individual’s sexual orientation. These results suggest that the correlates of sex drive and the organization of sexual orientation are different for women and men.
This is one of those studies where a perfectly good (i.e., falsifiable) hypothesis was being tested, but it turns out that the hypothesis is only half rejected. The premise is that there are two models for sex drive: Sex drive is a generalized “energizer” of sexual behaviors vs. sex drive is a specific energizer. Hunger is a generalized energizer because when you get hungry you could end up wanting to eat anything you normally eat (never mind cravings …. you don’t get a single craving for one thing forever when it comes to food).
This paper actually reports three different studies. The first study looked at 1,735 college students, who completed an anonymous survey. The second study had a disproportionate percentage of gay and lesbian participants … volunteers from student and political organizations in southern California. Again, an anonymous questionaire was used. The third study was an Internet study on “sexual attitudes and interests.”
Obviously, one could point out potential flaws. This is self-reporting and the sample selection was not necessarily ideal.
Here are the results summarized in a different way:
Studies 1 and 3 showed that, for heterosexual men, sex drive correlated with attraction to women, but not with attraction to men. For heterosexual women, in contrast, sex drive correlated with both attraction to women and attraction to men. Thus, for heterosexual women, sex drive seems to act as a generalized energizer of sexual attractions to both women and men. For heterosexual men, in contrast, sex drive seems to energize only dominant attractions.
It is indeed possible that men and women have fundamentally different sex drives. There is a lot of evidence to support that there are differences. I remain totally unconvinced that this is, however, anything other than an observational difference, or at most, a difference in the way male and female sex drive translates via various survey methods in certain subsets of society into a psychological experiment. The same exact hormonal and neruological processes could result in the observed differences if males and females simply respond differently in these settings for reasons unrelated to their sex drive. The real experiment one would have to do to test this in humans is probably not allowable…
Source:
Richard A. Lippa (2006)
Is High Sex Drive Associated With Increased Sexual Attraction to Both Sexes?. It Depends on Whether You Are Male or Female. Psychological Science 17 (1), 46–52.
“most women, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual
attraction to both men and women. For men, however, high sex
drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to only one
sex or the other”
Yet another study of admitters and deniers…I would love to see
the thinking that went on in participants heads” do I count the
dream with the robot? Should I divulge the secret of my youth and
the swiming hole? And what about theat dat dream I had about the
chimp sex?
As long as the people doing the study are the same morons who are
looking for the same results over and over again(women have
generally low sex drive, but men have high sex drive–but ‘not in
the gay way’, and if in the gay way, the really gay way;-)
The answer is: Bonobos, and lots of them, and Kinsey died in vain….
Did Kinsey die doing his research? I have yet to see the movie…
We can only hope;-) But official sources seem to point towards pneumonia, etc…He wa sinvolved in a battle with US Customs Enforcement and the Indian thought police who were confiscating his incoming books and materials related to his research….the case was settled in 1957, a victory, but Kinsey wasn’t around to know the difference, because he was no doubt cavorting in heaven with
bawdy bad angels who managed to slip by St “Peter” The movie “is nothing compared to the book”
OOOOPss…that is the “Indiana thought police” ..I don’t want to give those wife swapping nnatives a bad reputation here…
What i want to know however is when the woman is attracted to only the man say in a relationship, why it is that she would constantly want sex and other sexual pleasures from him when normally most women are not stimulated into having sex by themselves but seem to have to be coaxed into it by the male.
My guess is if she needs to be coaxed, she is with the wrong buck….
How about we start a survey? I handed out this first questionaire, and got some of the usual suspects in return: My survey–of the woman sitting next to me–a type AA high achiever,working toward a second masters degree, etc., and she feels that men who pursue her appear
sex with same male occurs.
1)weak, and unattractive, no matter how good loking they are.
2) She like to be the pursuer, but in a feminine way–to attain by never striving to attain.a)She likes to have the power of pursuit, and if she is comfortable both b)emotionally and c)physically,
3) then she feels comfortable, and desiring of sex with the man who makes her feel so.
4) Friendship, that old boot, came up a few times, and the sense of being secure in knowing that
5) the man she has sex with, and hence desires it with, is sanitary and healthy, because
6) past experience with unsanitary conditions that threatened her health, so
7) there is a great release (called pleasure–sex) when she feels that all conditions aforementioned are met, and so