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?
Keep in mind that this study only reflects upon individuals born between 1978-1985. Based on the recent increase in entertainment promoting promiscuous behavior (ie. the American Pie series, EuroTrip, ), I expect that current attitudes (of 18-25 y/o's) would differ, even from those in 2003.
Well, the study has its limits, and this could be another one of them, so as I said it's far from conclusive. However, in this particular case, I wonder if the kind of entertainment that you indicate really nudges young adults sexuality or limits to expose a widely known but denied truth (in Italy we say "Punchinello's secret", also when someone declares that he has discovered something that everybody else knew very well in advance, it's said that he has "discovered hot water").
I'm thinking for example of pornographic movies, that exist... (read more)