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?
Interesting. That would work in the opposite direction from the two effects I was thinking of, and it could well be stronger than either of those effects.
Anyway, it strengthens the point that the numbers don't need to match.
From The New York Times:
So how sketchy is the research on human sexual behavior, anyway?