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?

That objections disappears if you assume an equal gender ratio in the population at large, which is usually the case.

Even in this case, you could have a minority of men who have sex with 100 women very quickly, then die, surrounded by other men who have sex with either 0 or one woman but live for a long time. Women in this scenario all live a long time. Then the average for men will be lower than the average for women.

4Luke_A_Somers14y

There is a slight unevenness in population, and it tends to favor the females (to the tune of 0.5% in the US), so effect 1, though exaggerated above, does exist. The second objection is not even marginal - indeed, it is very pertinent, especially when one considers the long tail of female sexuality. Most women will have few partners, and then you get the 1% who have over 100 times as many. In particular, streetwalkers: they are the tippy tip end of that tail, and they face greater dangers than other women - largely from the effects of criminalization, but partly from the factors that put them in such a circumstances in the first place (since streetwalking is one of the least attractive sex work options, let alone work options, and has a very low barrier to entry, an elevated fraction of them will be in dire straits to begin with). Similarly, highly promiscuous amateurs have much higher STD rates than usual. Since transmission from male to female is much higher rate than female to male, the women will bear the brunt of that too. So no, it doesn't actually disappear.

4OrphanWilde14y

No, it's still a legitimate objection to my statement that the numbers -have- to match. You can still have differing departure rates.

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