No, 75% of Men Wouldn’t Say Yes to Sex With a Stranger

It’s time to question the stereotype of the overeager man.

“Would you like to come over to my place to eat some pizza and have sex? Why, don’t you like pizza?”

In college, my friends would jokingly throw that pickup line around. Nobody meant it seriously. At least they didn’t admit it was serious, but they wouldn’t complain if it worked (I don’t think it ever did). The goal wasn’t to score, but to get the other person to laugh. It was an icebreaker more than an actual proposition.

Another one was, “Nice shoes. Want to fuck?”

Perhaps my friends had a weird sense of humor, but they also had a point: most of us have strong reactions to sexually explicit invitations. We either think the person is kidding or is out of their mind — it all depends on context and delivery.

If you already know the person, chances are you’ll think they’re kidding. If the person is a total stranger, you’ll probably think they’re out of their mind.

“75% of men will say yes to sex with a stranger,” the original study.

Your reaction may also vary depending on your sex. Common knowledge dictates that men hardly ever say no to an offer of casual sex, while women are more likely to call you a creep and walk away.

A famous paper by Clark and Hatfield (1989) was designed to prove that theory. Two studies were conducted, in 1978 and 1982, at Florida State University, where a confederate (a member of the study group or paid actor) would walk up to a fellow student of the opposite sex and, after a brief introduction, randomly ask one of three questions:

A. “Would you go out with me tonight?” B. “Would you come over to my apartment tonight?” C. “Would you go to bed with me tonight?”

Both men and women were about as equally likely to accept the offer of a date (about 50% of them said yes), but the more sexually explicit the offer became, the more the results changed. Men accepted the offer to go to a woman’s apartment 69% of the time, and 75% accepted the offer to sleep together. On the other hand, only 6% of women said yes to going to a man’s apartment, and zero women accepted the offer of sex.

Men’s responses varied between “I can’t tonight, what about tomorrow?” to “Why do we have to wait until tonight?” And the men who said no offered excuses such as “I’m married.”

The women, on the other hand, responded to sexually explicit invitations with, “Are you kidding me?” and “What’s wrong with you?”

Perhaps male confederates should have added a side of pizza to their offer of sex.

The Clark and Hatfield study became one of the most-cited pieces of data on male sexuality. No one blinks when someone states that 75% of men would say yes to sex with a stranger. People who promote this idea are usually selling a worldview where male sexuality is limited only by women’s restraint. They promote that men are sex-crazed pigs with no standards, and it’s up to women to put the breaks on male sexual desire.

Before we accept it as gospel truth, however, it’s worth looking into the particulars of the study, as well as subsequent studies along the same lines.

For starters, even though the confederates of the study and their targets had never met, they were all students attending the same university. Confederates were instructed to preface their question with, “I’ve been seeing you around campus and I think you’re cute.” That line quickly establishes the confederate is a peer, and makes him or her instantly more familiar than a “perfect stranger.”

Next, there’s the nature vs. nurture debate. In extremely simple terms, nature dictates that men are designed to “spread their seed,” and women are designed to be highly selective of whom they choose to mate with. Culture also dictates that men are supposed to be virile and always ready to have sex, and it would be unmanly to miss an opportunity to sleep with someone. On another hand, women are supposed to be virtuous and protect their reputation at all costs.

Most women need more information about the guy they’re going to sleep with, but to what extent is that driven by biology vs. culture? We don’t live in the jungle anymore, so it’s virtually impossible to separate a true biological response from a culturally induced one.

Women are more acutely aware of potential risks to their physical safety. On average, men are bigger and stronger than women, so going to a stranger’s apartment represents a bigger risk for women than for men, and so does agreeing to sex without any additional information.

A new study on casual sex, 35 years later.

In 2013, a team from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa redesigned the Clark and Hatfield study to measure gender differences in receptivity to sexual offers in a more diverse student population.

Researchers designed a pen-and-paper model which was perfected through three separate studies. In the final version, male and female students were presented with three composite faces of the opposite sex and asked to choose which face they found more attractive. Participants were asked to imagine they were single, and that person had come up with them on campus and said, “Hey, you were in my class last semester and I think you are really cute.”

Next, participants were asked to reply with yes or no to one of three questions, randomly assigned.

A. “You want to go out sometime?” B. “You want to come over to my place tonight?” C. “You would want to have sex with me tonight?”

They found that 80% of men said yes to a date, 61% said yes to going to the other person’s apartment, and 25% said yes to having sex. On the female side, 63% of women said yes to going on a date, 13% said yes to visiting the other person’s apartment, and 5% said yes to sex.

The data shows how men are generally more open to new opportunities/ experiences than women are. Once again, feeling safe in any situation, or having confidence in your capacity to extricate yourself from a potentially dangerous situation makes a difference.

Interestingly, both men's and women’s reasons to refuse casual sex tended to converge to “I don’t know this person well enough, and sex should be about intimacy.” Additionally, Men also commented on how a woman who approaches people like that could have “a screw loose,” and women were more likely to say the man “seemed creepy.”

If 75% of men would say yes to sex with a stranger in 1978, but only 25% would do so in 2013, what changed?

Despite its evolutionary psychology underpinnings, the original paper by Clark and Hatfield also calls out the need to research how the “threat of AIDS” affects sexual behavior, acknowledging there’s more to human sexual behavior than pure instinct. HIV was first reported in the 1980s, and fear grew throughout the 1980s and 1990s as the disease spread.

It’s worth remembering where the culture was in 1978 when the first study took place. America was just emerging from the Peace and Love era. The idea of a man saying yes to casual sex in the 1970s evokes the image of an Austin Powers-type character filling out a form: “Sex: yes, please.”

College enrollment was on the rise and marriage rates were on the decline, with the average age at first marriage gradually rising. In the 1970s men were following the trend of experimenting early and committing later.

In 2013, HIV wasn’t as much of a concern, but attitudes towards sex have changed for a variety of reasons other than fear of disease. It’s been widely reported that young people are having less sex than previous generations, with Gen Z now reportedly advocating for less sex on screen and more depictions of platonic connections.

We’ll never know with absolute certainty how many men who said yes to casual sex in the 1978 study did so because they really wanted to, or because they thought it was the “manly” thing to do. Also, we’ll never know how many men in the 2013 study would have said yes to casual sex in a real-life situation instead of a pencil-and-paper study. I’d guess reading a consent form before replying to a sexual proposition lowers libido somewhat.

In the never-ending dance of nature and nurture, nature might provide the choreography, but nurture dictates the rhythm. When we make decisions, we take into account our cultural baggage and what we’ve been taught others expect from us. We consider how our behavior will affect our image and our standing within a larger group. Belonging is one of the most fundamental needs humans experience, and we tend to shape our actions to fit in, whether it be into a more promiscuous culture or a more sexually restricted one.