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?

I'd expect college students to be more likely to have heard that even real lie detectors aren't accurate.

Sure, but "more likely" here means a base rate of maybe 1% instead of a base rate of maybe 0.1%. Either way, the fact that they even mentioned lie detection is likely to scare people into telling the truth whether or not they believe (as opposed to alieve) that lie detectors work.

I'd expect college students to be more likely to have heard that even real lie detectors aren't accurate.

Sure, but "more likely" here means a base rate of maybe 1%

My guess would be an order of magnitude larger than that (but still much less than 50%).

2NancyLebovitz14y

Good point about alief vs. belief about lie detectors.

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