Evolution, Sex, and Gender, Not to Mention Research

NancyLebovitz

Take the question of promiscuity. Everyone has always assumed — and early research had shown — that women desired fewer sexual partners over a lifetime than men. But in 2003, two behavioral psychologists, Michele G. Alexander and Terri D. Fisher, published the results of a study that used a “bogus pipeline” — a fake lie detector. When asked about actual sexual partners, rather than just theoretical desires, the participants who were not attached to the fake lie detector displayed typical gender differences. Men reported having had more sexual partners than women. But when participants believed that lies about their sexual history would be revealed by the fake lie detector, gender differences in reported sexual partners vanished. In fact, women reported slightly more sexual partners (a mean of 4.4) than did men (a mean of 4.0).

So how sketchy is the research on human sexual behavior, anyway?

From The New York Times:

Take the question of promiscuity. Everyone has always assumed — and early research had shown — that women desired fewer sexual partners over a lifetime than men. But in 2003, two behavioral psychologists, Michele G. Alexander and Terri D. Fisher, published the results of a study that used a “bogus pipeline” — a fake lie detector. When asked about actual sexual partners, rather than just theoretical desires, the participants who were not attached to the fake lie detector displayed typical gender differences. Men reported having had more sexual partners than women. But when participants believed that lies about their sexual history would be revealed by the fake lie detector, gender differences in reported sexual partners vanished. In fact, women reported slightly more sexual partners (a mean of 4.4) than did men (a mean of 4.0).

So how sketchy is the research on human sexual behavior, anyway?

What do you mean by "equally promiscuous"? Do you mean that women and men have the same average number of sex partners?

Yes, of course.

Than this follows from basic arithmetic and I don't see why this study is relevant.

Why everybody keep saying this? It's true only if the group surveyed is closed under the "sexual partnership" relation, which is hardly the case in any study.
An extreme example: a population of 10 men and 10 women, in which all the women have sex with just one man. Then in any group not closed under sexual partnerhsip the average for women is always 1 and for men is always 0, correctly indicating that women are more promiscuous than men.
The average is trivially equal only if the group is extended to the whole population, but in that case the average is not a good indicator of promiscuity (see the above example).
The study is indeed interesting because there are bound to be asymmetries, and it shows that they are skewed towards women.

Why everybody keep saying this? It's true only if the group surveyed is closed under the "sexual partnership" relation, which is hardly the case in any study.

Unless the group surveyed is deliberately gerrymandered for that, I doubt that would make for a very large difference. If the difference is 10%, as in this study, I have no trouble believing that, especially considering this (though there probably are other sources of noise); but if someone finds nothing obviously wrong with the studies without a fake lie detector where the difference is... (read more)

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