How Often Do Men Really Think About Sex?

The real answer may surprise you

Men have sex on the brain constantly, right? At least that’s what conventional wisdom tells us. In fact, men have the reputation for thinking about sex every seven seconds, which would amount to 8,000 sex thoughts a day — assuming the men are awake 16 hours a day. But is this notion accurate?

“It’s amazing the way people will spout off these fake statistics that men think about sex nearly constantly….”

According to a study in the Journal of Sex Research, our beliefs about the frequency of men’s sex thoughts are completely off base. In fact, researcher Terri Fisher says this perception is not only inaccurate, it’s damaging.

“It’s amazing the way people will spout off these fake statistics that men think about sex nearly constantly and so much more often than women do,” said Fisher. “When a man hears a statement like that, he might think there’s something wrong with him because he’s not spending that much time thinking about sexuality, and when women hear about this, if they spend significant time thinking about sex, they might think there’s something wrong with them.”

So what’s the truth about how often men think of sex?

“People who always give socially desirable responses to questions are perhaps holding back and trying to manage the impression they make on others.”

According to Fisher’s survey of 120 male and 163 female college students aged 18 to 25, men on average thought about sex 19 times per day, while women had about 10 sex thoughts daily. But obviously that’s not all they thought about: Men in the study reported thinking of food about 18 times a day, and sleep around 11 times daily, and women thought about sleep and food about 15 and 8.5 times a day respectively.

The study also found one possible reason for the differences in how often men and women thought about sex. Participants were not only asked to track their thoughts, but also their level of erotophilia, or how comfortable they are with their sexuality. Researchers found that with women, there was a link between their erotophilia score — as well as the extent they were concerned about being socially acceptable — and how much they thought about sexual activity.

“People who always give socially desirable responses to questions are perhaps holding back and trying to manage the impression they make on others,” Fisher said. “In this case, we’re seeing that women who are more concerned with the impression they’re making tend to report fewer sexual thoughts, and that’s because thinking about sexuality is not consistent with typical expectations for women.”

As a result of this, as well as the fact that previous exploration of this topic was based on the retrospective estimates of past study participants, Fisher says men have really gotten a bad rap in the sex thoughts department, and there was no solid justification for the 8,000 daily sex thought figure being bandied about in the first place.

“There’s really no good reason that our society should have believed that men are thinking so much more about sex than women,” she said. “Even the research that had been done previously doesn’t support the stereotype that men are thinking about sex every seven seconds.”

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Source:

Study debunks stereotype that men think about sex all day long. ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111128132704.htm