Women with higher levels of emotional intelligence appear to experience greater sexual satisfaction, according to research.

The study, conducted by the Twin Research Department at King’s College London, suggests that greater emotional intelligence (the ability to monitor and manage feelings and emotions in one’s self and others) is linked to higher numbers of orgasms.

The findings suggest that low emotional intelligence is a risk factor for female orgasmic disorder, one of the most common sexual problems suffered by women – where up to 30 percent of women find it difficult or impossible to reach a climax during sex.

The study, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, involved a total of 2,035 female twins from the TwinsUK registry, ranging in age from 18 to 83.

Professor Tim Spector, director of the Twin Research Department, said:

These findings show that emotional intelligence is an advantage in many aspects of your life including the bedroom. This study will help enormously in the development of behavioural and cognitive therapies to improve women’s sexual lives.

The TwinsUK registry consists of adult twins who have agreed to take part in studies to investigate the causes of common disorders – using twins makes it possible to disentangle genetic and environmental risk factors.

All participants completed questionnaires giving details of their sexual behaviour and performance and also answered questions designed to test their emotional intelligence.

A significant association was found between emotional intelligence and frequency of orgasm both during masturbation and sexual intercourse.

Women in the bottom 25 percent of the emotional intelligence range had twice the normal risk of infrequent orgasm.

Andrea Burri, a Psychologist and lead author of the King’s study, said:

Emotional intelligence seems to have a direct impact on women’s sexual functioning by influencing her ability to communicate her sexual expectations and desires to her partner.

Ms Burri continued that there was a possible connection with a woman’s ability to fantasise during sex.

Emotional intelligence seems to have a direct impact on women’s sexual functioning by influencing her ability to communicate her sexual expectations and desires to her partner.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 4:18 AM BST

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Skin is always in and good skin is one of the most attractive features a woman can have, so concentrate your time taking care of your skin, and you’ll need less make-up to look gorgeous. The most attractive skin is measured by its smoothness, evenness of tone and pore size.

Here’s how to get it! Make sure all products in your cabinet match your skins ever changing condition – your face soap especially. So take extra special care of dry skin with a quality creamy cleanser, and use moisturizer with sun block to combat the drying effects of the sun. If you have normal to oily use a neutral pH product, but not one that leaves your face tight. You may be trying to get back at your oily skin, and enjoy the feeling of a perfectly oil free skin for a few moments, but your face will not appreciate the over zealousness, and the oil will return with a vengeance thanks to a reaction by sebaceous glands.

At night use a quality moisturizer with beta or alpha hydroxy to reveal fresher, newer skin underneath, and during the day use one with a UVA guard. These products will smooth out the skin, and even reduce the appearance of pores over time.

The only other thing you can do to reduce the appearance of your pore size is to use a pore strip. The effects last about 2 days, and Biore’s strips are the first and best on the market. That’s it. Keep this routine consistent and you’ll have the sexiest skin around.

Okay, so now you’re ready to open up your make-up bag and get down to business. Wait. Before you continue on with your regular routine, rethink the point and start from scratch.

We all use makeup to be more appealing, so make sure your routine does exactly that. First rule of thumb is to know that your face is beautiful just the way it is. If you know this, you are at less danger of using make-up to hide, and using it to enhance instead. There always comes the point where any more is pointless, and then a hindrance.

A good rule of thumb is to remember that just because it’s on the shelf, doesn’t mean it has to be on your face. So let’s start with a bare face and work our way up from there.

Foundation can be a great help to enhance the look of your skin, the sexiest organ there is. But it is also the trickiest makeup you own, and can easily foil your plans for great looking skin. About 45% of women would be greatly benefited by a different colour foundation then the one they currently wear. Please don’t let this be you. You spend countless hours picking out lipstick and eye colour shades, but this time would be much better spent picking out the perfect colour for your foundation.

Most over the counter make-up tends to be too pink for your face, but without proper lighting, you will be unable to tell. Remember, the whole point is to even out the tone, not paint over it with a new colour! Go on a mission to get the perfect colour for your face.

Rule #1: Don’t trust the woman at the cosmetics counter. She’ll get you the closest shade they have, but it may not be the one for you. Be a stickler. Let the woman know you only want the perfect match. She’ll understand, because she would NEVER settle for less than perfect for herself. Try the foundation on, walk out of the store with a compact into the sunlight and into the shade and see what happens. If it’s not perfect – Don’t buy it. If you bought it, don’t wear it. Go for the sheerest texture you feel comfortable with.

Rule #2: Focus on 2-3 things that actually make you more attractive. Remember that too much make-up is often a pet peeve for men, and that goes double when it applies to the girl on their arm.

The first thing a man notices on a woman’s face is her eyes, the second is her mouth. This makes it easy. If you only wear 2 pieces of make-up, make it lipstick/gloss and mascara.

Lips are an erogenous zone: When his eyes are focused on your mouth, he is focused on an erogenous zone and will react accordingly. Men are most attracted to lipstick colours in the red family; it simulates the sympathetic nervous systems reaction to sexual readiness. Read: A sexy mouth. Alright! Forget trend/cute colours, like hot pink, orange, gold or purple. They might get your man’s attention, but he won’t be thinking of kissing those lips. Use a lip liner in a close match to lipstick to smooth the shape of your lips (symmetry is attractive to the human eye and will draw his eyes to your sexy pout).

The eyes have it: We use them to communicate in countless ways including meet, greet, flirt, tell who we are, react and explain – and according to a study by UCLA, 65% of men say they are the first thing they notice about a woman. You want him to focus on your eyes, so that he is looking into you, not over you, and here he will meet the woman he will get to know. Don’t let your make-up be a hindrance here. It is a mistake. Common mistakes are too much eyeliner, non-neutral colours (green, blue, purple, orange).

Widen your eyes with a light colour on the brow and close to the lash, and a neutral colour in the middle.

Use quality soft-black or black mascara and use no more than 2 coats. Clumpy mascara is never attractive. This will draw attention to the eyes, and let you bat like a pro!

Posted by Rosie as Philosophy at 9:59 PM BST

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A class of nerve fibres in the skin that specifically transmit pleasure messages to the brain have been identified by U.S. and Swedish boffins, who say their finding could improve understanding of how touch sustains human relationships.

For many years, Scientists have been trying to understand the mechanisms behind how the body experiences pain, and the nerves involved in conveying those messages to the brain. Because, in conditions like Neuropathy, where the peripheral nervous system is damaged, people can suffer a great deal after the messaging system has gone wrong, and feel pain even when there is no cause.

Professor Francis McGlone, the author of the study said:

If you get a piece of grit in your eye, have a toothache, or bite your tongue, it hurts so much because there are more C fibres there. The research we have been doing is building evidence for another role of C fibres in the skin that are not pain receptors, but pleasure receptors.

In this research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, experts from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and the University of North Carolina, including scientists from the company Unilever, identified “C-tactile” nerve fibres, which sent pleasure messages to the brain.

Then the scientists used a “robotic tactile stimulator” – basically, a computerized mechanical arm fitted with a soft brush – on twenty volunteers, to determine the speed at which C-fibres should be touched to activate the pleasure sensation.

It was observed that if the rate of being rubbed was faster or slower than an optimum speed of four to five centimetres per second, then the nerve fibres weren’t activated, and the touch wasn’t pleasurable. They also discovered that C-tactile fibres are only present on hairy skin and are absent in the palm of the hand.

Professor McGlone said these nerve fibres are part of the evolutionary mechanism that helps humans bond. People preferred being fondled in a manner similar to the one used by a mother to comfort a baby or by couples when demonstrating love.

He continued:

We believe this could be Mother Nature’s way of ensuring that mixed messages are not sent to the brain when it is in use as a functional tool. Our primary impulse as humans is procreation, but there are some mechanisms in place that are associated with behaviour and reward which are there to ensure relationships continue.

Posted by Jonathan as Biology, Sociobiology at 9:10 PM BST

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Oxytocin, a hormone best known for cementing the bond between a mother and her newborn child could also play a part in selecting a partner.

Other research along this line has hinted at the importance of Oxytocin in certain social situations between adults. For example, people administered with the hormone made overly generous offers in an economic game that measured trust; whilst men who got a dose of Oxytocin proved better at remembering the faces of strangers a day later, compared to subjects who received a placebo.

According to this new study, published in the journal Hormones and Behavior, researchers found that men and women who inhaled a spritz of the hormone rated strangers as more attractive.

Angeliki Theodoridou, a Psychologist at the University of Bristol, who led the study said:

[When Oxytocin courses through our blood,] we are more likely to see people we don’t know in a more positive light

This effect adds to the hormone’s known role in human relationships.

The researchers tested 96 volunteers in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, where participants received either a spray of Oxytocin or a placebo. Subjects were then asked to rate pictures of 48 men and women for attractiveness, and 30 for trustworthiness. The team also tested for mood.

The results showed that subjects who received Oxytocin tended to rate both male and female strangers as both more attractive and more trustworthy – regardless of their mood.

The research didn’t examine how Oxytocin could affect social judgements, but Theodoridou speculates that the hormone dampens brain activity in a region involved in processing fearful emotions, called the Amygdala – A previous study had found that Oxytocin tempered Amygdala activation in volunteers who saw a face that had previously been paired with a slight shock.

Although Theodoridou’s study shows that Oxytocin acts similarly on both men and women when rating strangers, sex differences could emerge in real-world situations, noted Jennifer Bartz, a Psychologist at Mount Sinai Medical School in New York. More research is needed to see if this is the case, she said.

Regardless of Oxytocin’s social effects, greedy entrepreneurs have already been trying to cash in. One company already touts a spray that claims to engender trust in others, although it offers little more than testimonials as proof for its efficacy.

Could a similar spray spark romances between total strangers? Theodoridou doesn’t think so. “I would not endorse any of these products,” she stated.

Posted by Jonathan as Biochemistry, Psychology at 2:27 AM BST

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Researchers have confirmed that male Chimpanzees that are willing to share the proceeds of their hunting expeditions with females mate twice as often as counterparts who prefer to keep their food to themselves.

Cristina Gomes and her colleagues, from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, studied chimps in the Tai National Park, Cote d’Ivoire, West Africa, and found that more generous Chimps had sex more often.

These findings are significant because they’re long-term arrangements, whereby males will share meat from hunting expeditions with females even when they’re not in oestrus – thereby increasing the possibility of having sex when the same females are in oestrus.

How females choose their mating partners and why males hunt and share meat with them are questions that have long puzzled scientists. The “meat for sex hypothesis” had already been proposed to explain why male chimps might share with females, but previous attempts to observe the phenomenon had failed, because previous researchers had only looked for direct exchanges where a male shared meat with a fertile female and copulated with her straight away.

Dr Gomes said:

Previous studies might not have found a relationship between mating success and meat sharing because they focused on short-term exchanges; or perhaps because in those groups access to females was driven by male coercion so females rarely chose their mating partners.

The researchers therefore took a different approach, reasoning that previous studies had found that grooming exchanges (where the animals take it in turns to groom each other) happen over long periods, so they theorized, why not meat and sex?

Dr Gomes and co-author Christophe Boesch collected data from 262 male to female meat transfers (the meat was mostly that of Red Colobus monkeys), and 262 matings during times when females were in oestrous. The scientists noted that males would share with all types of females, whether in oestrous or not, although the former received preference.

Dr Gomes said:

We looked at chimps when they were not in oestrus. The males still share with them – they might share meat with a female one day, and only copulate with her a day or two later.

By sharing, the males increase the number of times they mate, and the females increase their intake of calories. What’s amazing is that if a male shares with a particular female, he doubles the number of times he copulates with her, which is likely to increase the probability of fertilising that female.

It’s also suspected the same may hold true for hunter-gatherer humans, since earlier studies suggest that men who are more successful hunters tend to have more sexual partners and a larger number of offspring.

Dr Gomes suggested her team’s findings could offer clues about human evolution. And indeed, the teams report states:

Similar studies on humans will determine if the direct nutritional benefits that women receive from hunters in foraging societies could also be driving the relationship between reproductive success and good hunting skills.

The team describe their findings in the journal PLoS One.

Posted by Jonathan as Anthropology, Sociobiology at 12:27 AM BST

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According to new research from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, adults aged 45 and over, when starting new sexual relationships, are taking chances with their sexual health and are at risk of catching sexually transmitted infections (STIs).

When questioned, almost one in five 45-54 year olds (19%) admitted having had unprotected sex with someone other than a long-term partner in the past five years.

Surprisingly, nearly one-third of this age group (32%) described their risk of getting an STI when having unprotected sex with a new partner or someone other than their current partner as either unlikely or very unlikely. Even more worryingly, a further 20% believed that their chances of picking up an infection were ‘next to nothing’ in these circumstances.

When comparing the older and younger generations, just 13% of 18-24 year olds believed their chances of acquiring an STI from unprotected sex were ‘next to nothing’, compared to twice as many over 55s (25%).

A quarter of 45-54 year olds surveyed (23%) said they didn’t use contraception because they trusted the person they were sleeping with not to have an STI, with one in ten saying they didn’t like the feeling of condoms.

Heidi Wright, Head of Practice at the RPSGB, said:

The majority of safe sex messages are targeted at teenagers, but as more adults begin new relationships later in life, they quite clearly need advice too. Over the last decade STIs have risen significantly in the 45-64 age group.

You can’t always tell who has an STI and infections don’t discriminate on the basis of age. If you have unprotected sex with a new partner, you are at risk of STIs, which often show few symptoms but have can have serious consequences to health.

It can be difficult to know where to go for information about sexual health, but your local Pharmacy can be an excellent source of advice. Pharmacies are open long hours and weekends when GP surgeries are closed. Most now have a private consultation area where patients can discuss their problems confidentially and there is no need for an appointment.

Posted by Jonathan as Biology, Sociology at 11:59 PM BST

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A unique study of twins separated at birth suggests that genes may help determine the age at which a person first engages in sexual intercourse.

Psychologist Nancy Segal of California State University in Fullerton, USA, looked at 48 pairs of twins who were separated at birth as well as 23 individual twins to see how genes influenced their sexual maturity. Using this methodology, the researchers were able to avoid the influence of a common family environment, which might have led them to overestimate the effect of genes.

Lead researcher, Nancy Segal said:

It’s not like there’s a gene for having a sex at a certain date. Instead, heritable behavioural traits such as impulsivity could help determine when people first have sex.

In comparing the twins sexual histories, Segal had each of the participants take a sexual life history interview, composed of a sexual meaning survey, a sexual life history timeline, and a sexual behaviour questionnaire.

Segal’s team found that genes explained a third of the differences in participants’ age at first intercourse (which was, on average, a little over 19 years old) – by comparison, roughly 80% of variations in height across a population can be explained by genes alone.

It might be argued that conservative social mores might delay a teen’s first sexual experience, causing scientists to underestimate the effect of genes, and indeed, the research team acknowledge a less pronounced genetic effect among twins born before 1948, compared with those who came of age in the 1960s or later. Other factors may also make the effects of genes harder to discern, for example, Segal’s team found that female participants who felt unhappy and unfulfilled in their home life were more likely to have sex at a younger age.

As for the specific genes involved, another team of researchers had found that a version of a gene encoding a receptor for the neurotransmitter Dopamine is associated with age at first intercourse. Others have linked the same version of the gene – called DRD4 – to impulsive, risk-taking behaviour.

The study “Age at first intercourse in twins reared apart: Genetic influence and life history events” is published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Posted by Jonathan as Biology, Psychology at 6:41 AM BST

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Risky sexual behaviour, such as having unprotected sex with multiple partners puts people at risk of catching sexually transmitted infections, but not as much as the characteristics of their sexual partners, according to a new study.

The findings, which University of Florida and University of Pittsburgh researchers report in the April issue of Sexually Transmitted Diseases, could assist healthcare providers when screening patients for STD risks.

University of Florida College of Medicine, Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Health policy research, Stephanie A. S. Staras, said:

If you are choosing high-risk partners, you are much more likely to have an STD, even when we account for your condom-use patterns. The theory is simple: You need to have sex with someone who has an STD to get an STD. Based on the prevalence of STDs in the United States, it seems like the public may not fully understand their risk.

The study examined the sexual activities, partner characteristics and STD diagnoses of 412 subjects between the ages of 15 and 24. Amongst the subjects whose partners were categorized as high-risk, half were diagnosed with an STD. By comparison, only 40 percent of the people whose own behaviours were labelled as high-risk were diagnosed with an STD.

University of Florida researchers measured five specific characteristics to gauge how risky certain partners were. The characteristics studied included whether their partner has a problem with marijuana or alcohol, was at least five years older or younger, had been in jail, had sex with other people in the past year or had been treated for an STD in the past year.

The researchers then created a composite, totalling up the number of negative partner characteristics for each subject and comparing them against the number of each person’s own individual risky behaviours, which ranged from how often they used condoms to how many people they had sex with.

Overall, researchers found considering all of the partner characteristics together was the strongest predictor for STDs. People whose partners had five or more risk characteristics were three times more likely to have an STD than those whose partners had no more than two characteristics.

Of these characteristics, the most prescient were if a partner had already had an STD and if a couple had an age difference of more than five years. Subjects whose partners were five years older or younger than themselves were more than twice as likely to be diagnosed with an STD than participants whose partners were about the same age, the researchers found.

Lead author of the study, Professor Staras said:

Healthcare providers usually ask patients about their own sexual behaviours, but inquiring only about a person’s own behaviours may cause some patients to slip through the cracks. For example, some subjects in the study reported very low-risk behaviours but were having sex with very high-risk partners.

Adding a few simple questions about partner characteristics during STD screenings could help providers catch more patients who need to be tested and educated about condom use and other protective measures.

Partner selection is an area of STD prevention that could complement what we are already doing with promoting condom use, and could possibly really help people. If somehow we could convince individuals to incorporate this information in a meaningful way into their decision-making, then we could reduce STDs.

Professor Richard A. Crosby, Chairman of the Department of health behaviour at the University of Kentucky and a Co-director of the Rural Center for AIDS/STD Prevention, who was not involved with this study, said:

It’s important for people to remember that the risks mentioned in the study are just generalizations, not set-in-stone giveaways for STDs.

From a practical and prevention perspective, we still need to rely on people using valid methods of protection to avoid being infected or infecting.

Posted by Jonathan as Biology, Sociology at 2:11 AM BST

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Women should forget small talk and flirting if they want to chat-up a man, because according to new research, the way to a man’s heart is by giving him no room to misunderstand your intentions.

A study by Scientists at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, USA, found that while women may be attracted to men who have a way with words, men prefer a direct, no-nonsense approach when being chatted up by women – since they had trouble ‘reading’ hints, even if they were accompanied by coy smiles and  body language; according to the research reported in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

Researchers asked a group of forty women for their top chat-up lines (or things they might say to a man to indicate that they were interested in dating or spending time with him), they then put the fifty most popular suggestions to a panel of 38 women and 32 men, asking the participants to rate how effective the lines would be in practice.

The lines fell into ten categories:

• Directly asking someone on a date
• Hinting at a date
• Statements of commonalities
• Insistence on calling or giving of a phone number
• Compliments
• Directly asking about relationship status
• Statements of personal interest
• Sexual humour
• Questions of familiarity
• Saying a subtle “Hello”

The women believed that giving subtle cues or talking about common interests would perform better than they actually did – assuming the men would respond to the same things they thought women responded to best – whilst the men responded differently. Women also thought that offering their phone number would not go over very well, when in fact, the men concluded that direct approaches such as invitations to dinner or the cinema were most appealing, followed by an exchange of phone numbers and then straightforward questions such as “Do you have any plans for later?” and “What are you doing tonight?”.

Some women also rated the direct approach highly, but most women were impressed with those lines which were designed to establish some common interests between them and the man who was chatting them up (which men rated 5^th).

The least successful tactics were smiles or lines such as “Do I know you from somewhere? You look very familiar.” or “Hello, how’s it going?”, which offered no indication as to the type of interaction desired. These were slightly less successful than supposedly humorous lines, such as “Where have you been my all life?”, “Did it hurt when you fell from Heaven?” and “Your shirt matches my bedspread – you belong in my bed”, for both men and women.

Psychologist Dr Joel Wade said:

The direct indication of a possible date as well as the hint of a possible date gives the man a clear signal – instead of sending mixed non-verbal signals that the man must decipher.

He added that straightforward suggestions removed any “uncertainty regarding the outcome of the interaction“.

Posted by Jonathan as Anthropology, Psychology at 3:09 AM BST

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A five question quick and simple assessment may help determine if a woman has low sexual desire, otherwise known as hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

In a study, released this month in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 263 women were recruited at 27 centres throughout the United States. These women took the simple decreased sexual desire screening test, and their answers were then reviewed with a clinician who was not an expert in female sexual desire.

Independently, and while being unaware of the non-expert clinician’s opinion, an expert in female sexual dysfunction conducted a standard diagnostic interview with the study participant.

The results found that the decreased sexual desire screening tool and standard diagnostic interview were in agreement in 85.2 percent of all the cases.

Irwin Goldstein, M.D., Co-author of the study and Director of Sexual Medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego, California, said:

This simple screening tool can be a great first line test to see if a woman has low sexual desire. I am encouraged that this study may help improve the dialogue about a woman’s sexual health in the doctor’s office.

Dr. Goldstein, who is also Editor-in-chief of The Journal of Sexual Medicine, says that many health care professionals are often reluctant to talk to their patients about sexual health for several reasons, including limited time with a patient, lack of training, embarrassment, and the absence of effective treatment options for women.

The entire test consists of the following questions that women answer with either a Yes or No:

1. In the past was your level of sexual desire or interest good or satisfying to you?
2. Has there been a decrease in your level of sexual desire or interest?
3. Are you bothered by your decreased level of sexual desire or interest?
4. Would you like your level of sexual desire or interest to increase?
5. Please check all the factors that you may feel may be contributing to your current decrease in sexual desire or interest:

• An operation, depression, injuries or other medical condition
• Medication, drugs or alcohol you are currently taking
• Pregnancy, recent childbirth, menopausal symptoms
• Other sexual issues you may be having such as pain, decreased arousal or orgasm
• Your partner’s sexual problems
• Dissatisfaction with your relationship or partner
• Stress or fatigue

If a woman says “No” to any of the questions in 1-4, then she does not qualify for the diagnosis of generalized acquired low sexual function. If the women answers “Yes” to questions 1-4 and “No” to the factors in question 5, then she may have generalized acquired low sexual desire.

Dr. Goldstein said the screening tool should be made a key part of any women’s health check up.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 10:00 PM BST

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