Researchers have found that trained sexologists can infer a woman’s history of vaginal orgasms, by observing the way she walks.

According to the study, published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, sixteen female Belgian university students completed a questionnaire on their sexual behaviour, including what types of orgasms they have and how often they have them – they were then videotaped from a distance whilst walking in a public place. During which time they were told to think part of the time about a beach vacation, and part of the time about being with a man they love.

Next, the videotapes were rated by two professors of sexology and two research assistants trained in the functional-sexological approach to sexology; none of these experts were aware of the women’s orgasmic history.

This panel were able to correctly predict if the woman had vaginal orgasms through watching the way the women walked, more than 80 percent of the time.

Further analysis revealed that the sum of stride length and vertebral rotation was greater for the vaginally orgasmic women. So, those differences could be related to how internal structures affect the different nerves that help control a woman’s ability to have an orgasm, as well as the type of orgasm she has.

It’s possible that a woman’s anatomical features may predispose her to greater or lesser tendency to experience vaginal orgasms. And, lead author, Stuart Brody of the University of the West of Scotland, commented:

Blocked pelvic muscles, which might be associated with psychosexual impairments, could both impair vaginal orgasmic response and gait.

In addition, vaginally orgasmic women may feel more confident about their sexuality, which could be reflected in their gait. So, the authors add:

Such confidence might also be related to the relationship(s) that a woman has had, given the finding that specifically penile-vaginal orgasm is associated with indices of better relationship quality.

Previous research has linked vaginal orgasms to better mental health, and this study provides a little support for the assumption of a link between muscle blocks and sexual function, according to the authors.

They conclude that it may lend credibility to the idea of incorporating training in movement, breathing and muscle patterns into the treatment of sexual dysfunction.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 9:41 PM BST

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Men want good health, harmony and a bit of social respect rather than sex, according to a new survey.

Interviews of almost 28,000 randomly selected men (aged 20 to 75) were conducted in a large scale international survey of male attitudes towards life and sex, which was published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine.

The men, from countries including the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Mexico and Brazil overwhelmingly rated attributes such as being seen as a man of honour and having the respect of friends ahead of having success with women, being sexually active or attractive, when assessing masculinity.

When it came to quality of life, one-third of respondents said being in good health was the most important factor, followed by a harmonious family life (26% of respondents) and being in a good relationship with their partner or wife (19% of respondents). Just two percent put a satisfying sex life as their top priority.

Julia Heiman, Director of The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and an author of the study said:

Many meanings, positive and negative, are attached to the term, ‘masculinity‘. To ask a large sample of men what comprises their own sense of masculinity is very useful for both the media and for research.

These results suggest we should pay attention and ask rather than presume we know.

The report concludes:

Taken together, this body of research underscores the centrality to men of nonsexual aspects of the male identity [and] emphasises the importance of the couple relationship.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 11:57 PM BST

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You can tell a lot about people from the way they move, and previous studies have shown that gender, age, and even mood could be predicted.

Now it seems that a survey published in the journal Current Biology has found that the way you walk is directly related to your sex, with a masculine walking motion being perceived by observers as coming towards them, whilst a characteristically feminine walk seemed to be heading the other way.

The research was done by illuminating just the joints of model walkers and asking observers to identify characteristics about the figures’ movements.

Professor Rick van der Zwan, of Southern Cross University in Australia said:

It’s a really interesting thing,

If you look at someone with just their joints illuminated when they aren’t moving, it’s difficult to tell what it is you are looking at. But as soon as they move, instantaneously, you can tell that it’s a person and perceive their nature.

You can tell if it’s a boy or a girl, young or old, angry or happy. You can discern all these qualities about their state, affect, and actions with no cues at all about what they look like – with no form at all – just motion.

An earlier study of biological motion perception that used male models noted that observers tended to perceive the point-light figures as always facing in their direction, even if that wasn’t the case.

In their study, van der Zwan and colleagues took a closer look at this phenomenon by having observers view a series of point-light figures ranging from an extremely “girly girl” to a “hulking male”. At the midway point was a gender-neutral walker that observers judged as male half the time and female half the time.

The results showed that walking male figures did indeed appear to face toward the observers, while female figures appeared to be facing away from observers. The pattern was the same regardless of the gender of the observer, a finding that van der Zwan considers an important clue about the behaviour.

The results are also the first to show a link between the perception of gender from biological motion cues and the perception of orientation.

van der Zwan and colleagues wrote:

Our data suggest that biological motion is an important cue for social organisms trying to operate in environments where other cues as to the actions or intentions of other organisms may be ambiguous

Whilst the precise role of local cues in mediating these effects requires further explication, it is tempting to speculate that the orientation biases reported here reflect the development of perceptual mechanisms that weigh in the probable cost of misinterpreting the actions and intentions of others. For example, a male figure that is otherwise ambiguous might best be perceived as approaching to allow the observer to prepare to flee or fight. Similarly, for observers, and especially infants, the departure of females might signal also a need to act, but for different reasons.

Posted by Jonathan as Anthropology, Biology at 11:46 PM BST

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New research suggests that men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones.

Virpi Lummaa, an ecologist at the University of Sheffield, suggested that after accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60, from 140 countries that practice polygamy, to varying degrees, lived on average 12 percent longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations.

The latest research might solve a long-standing puzzle of life expectancy in human biology: Why do men live for so long? This question only makes sense after asking the same for women, who (unlike nearly all other animals) live many years past the menopause.

One answer seems to be a phenomenon called the ‘grandmother effect’. For every ten years a woman survives past the menopause, she gains two additional grandchildren, and Lummaa says. It seems that doting on and spoiling grandchildren aids their survival, as well as furthering some of their grandmother’s genes.

Men, by contrast, can reproduce well into their 60s and even 70s and 80s, and most researchers assumed this explained their longevity. But Lummaa and colleague Andy Russell wondered whether other factors explained the long lifespan of men, such as a ‘grandfather effect’.

The team tested this possibility by analyzing church-gathered records for 25,000 Finns from the 18th and 19th centuries, when people tended to move little, nobody practiced contraception, and the Lutheran Church enforced monogamy.

During this era, only widowed men were allowed to remarry, and if they had children with their new wife, they fathered more kids, on average, than men who only married once.

Dr Lummaa said:

Ultimately, remarried men don’t end up with any more grandchildren. If anything the presence of a grandfather was associated with decreased survival of grandchildren.

Adding:

Perhaps, the children of the first mother lose out on food and resources that go to the second mother’s kids. It’s kind of the Cinderella effect.

This was a finding that was supported by previous research, which showed even fathers with only one wife provided no benefit to their grandchildren.

With the grandfather effect ruled out, Lummaa and Russell next wondered whether the constraints of human physiology explain male longevity – In the same way that men have nipples that evolved for women to nourish their young – male longevity might be a consequence of biological selection for long-lived women.

To answer this question, the researchers compared the lifespan of men from polygamous countries with those from monogamous nations.

Using data from the World Health Organization, Lummaa and Russell scored 189 countries on a monogamy scale of one to four – totally monogamous to mostly polygamous. They also took into account a country’s gross domestic product and average income to minimise the effect of better nutrition and healthcare in monogamous Western nations.

Lummaa stressed that their monogamy score is a crude first stab, and that they are working to find multiple ways to assess marriage patterns. So, the conclusions could evaporate under further analysis.

The study suggests that if female survival is the main explanation for male longevity, then monogamous and polygamous men would live for about the same length of time. However, it seems that fathering more children with more wives leads to increased male longevity. Men, therefore, live long because they’re fertile well into their grey years.

But, the explanation could be both social and genetic. Men who continue fathering kids into their 60s and 70s could take better care for their bodies because they have mouths to feed. Although evolutionary forces acting over thousands of years could also select for longer-lived men in polygamous cultures.

Lummaa presented her findings at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology’s annual meeting in Ithaca, New York.

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Chris Wilson, an evolutionary anthropologist at Cornell University in Ithaca, who attended the talk, said the study is a valid hypothesis and a good prediction. But he believes the care and attention of several wives who depend on the social status of their ageing husband could explain everything:

It doesn’t surprise me that men in those societies live longer than men in monogamous societies, where they become widowed and have nobody to care for them.

Posted by Jonathan as Anthropology, Sociobiology at 10:43 PM BST

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Statistics from an Australian global sex study have given a rare scientific glimpse of the sexual habits of people aged 40 to 80, and have shown that about a third of men and women are doing it more than once a week.

The survey also shows that 83 percent of men and 74 percent of women in the age group have had sex in the past year.

However, lead Australian researcher, sex therapist Dr Rosie King, a consultant for the drug company Pfizer (that funded the study) claims that it’s even more significant how many are having a lot of sex.

We found 38 percent of mature men and 29 percent of mature women were having sex more than once a week

That’s a significant amount of older men and women having a lot of sex, perhaps more than many of us suspected.

Dr King said the results, published in the CSIRO journal Sexual Health were “exciting“, because most of the 1,500 participants were in long-term relationships.

These people are not frothy young singles out at the clubs having hot casual sex

They’re more likely to be at home with their loved one in front of the fire. So, in that respect it’s quite impressive.

But there were problems in the bedroom, with a quarter of the men admitting they regularly suffered from premature ejaculation and erectile difficulties.

Dr King said issues with sexual function increase with age, as more men developed diabetes and obesity, and start taking medication known to affect sexual performance. Problems were also common among women; with a quarter saying they have trouble reaching orgasm and a third admitting to a lack of sexual interest.

For a lot of these women, their sex drive isn’t like what they see on Sex and the City or read about in romance novels, so they think there’s something wrong with them, when it’s totally normal

The study also showed women were less likely to be having sex than men their own age; this was because they tended to be with older men, who have erection difficulties, or were more likely to be widowed or divorced from partners who had remarried younger women. So the pickings are particularly slim for women over the age of 40 compared with men.

Dr King said it was most concerning to see less than 20 percent of participants had spoken to a doctor about their problems, and just six percent said they had been asked about their sexual health by a doctor, in the last three years.

Posted by Jonathan as Sociology at 11:58 PM BST

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