In an international index measuring one-night stands, total numbers of partners and attitudes towards sex, Britain comes out ahead of America, Australia, France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands; making the British the most promiscuous of any large western industrial nation.

The study was conducted by asking more than 14,000 people in 48 countries to fill in an anonymous questionnaire about their attitudes towards casual sex and how many people they expected to sleep with over the next five years. The results were then turned into an index of ‘sociosexuality‘, which measured how sexually liberal people are in thought and behaviour.

Most individuals scored between 4 and 65. Finland ranked highest with an average of 51 and Taiwan came lowest with 19. Britain’s average score of 40 placed it 11th overall – behind countries such as Latvia, Croatia and Slovenia, but highest amongst major western industrial nations.

The researchers behind the study suggest that high scores might be correlated to the way society is increasingly willing to accept sexual promiscuity among women as well as men. Cultural developments have also meant women are now as able to engage in no-strings sex as much as men.

David Schmitt, a Professor of Psychology at Bradley University, Illinois, who oversaw the research, said:

Historically we have repressed women’s short-term mating and there are all sorts of double standards out there where men’s short-term mating was sort of acceptable but women’s wasn’t

Britain’s high score was attributed to factors such as the decline of religious scruples about extramarital sex, the growth of equal pay and equal rights for women and a highly sexualised popular culture.

Professor Schmitt pointed out that the ratio of men to women is one of the factors that determines a country’s ranking, noting that high scores in many Baltic and eastern European states could be linked to the fact that women outnumber men, and thus are under more pressure to conform to what men want in order to find a mate. By contrast, in Asian countries, men tend to slightly outnumber women, so it is the men who have to conform to what women want.

The findings are backed up by earlier research showing that the British are more likely than other nationalities to have “stolen” another person’s partner, and apparently a third of British men are in relationships with women that they have poached from other long-term relationships. Amongst British women, 28% had poached their boyfriend from another relationship, rather than forming a relationship with a single man.

This compares with America, where just 17% of men had “stolen” another person’s girlfriend. In France only 10% of both men and women were poachers, whilst in Germany the figures were 17% for men and 14% for women.

Interestingly, in more liberal countries such as Britain, women might even be becoming more promiscuous than men, since one of the latest theories emerging from Evolutionary Psychologists such as Professor Schmitt, is the idea that when women are at their most fertile, they become even more willing than men to consider one-night stands.

However, there are still key differences in the behaviours of men and women, especially regarding the ages at which they are most sexually liberated. Schmitt found that men tended to have the most sexual partners, and to try hardest to acquire new ones whilst in their twenties. On the other hand, Women’s promiscuity and lustful thoughts tended to peak whilst in their thirties.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociobiology at 3:26 PM GMT

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Women’s lack of interest in sex is so common that it should be considered the norm, according to experts, who have conducted some new research.

Psychologist, Professor Marita McCabe, of Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia, studied 400 women, and found that the normal way in which they experienced desire was once they were already engaged in sexual activity.

Sixty 60 percent of the women described their libido as unusually low, with most reportedly only getting in the mood for sex, after the intimacy had begun. Further, many women did not realise that it was normal for their sex drive to have highs and lows.

Professor McCabe said:

In movies, on TV, in magazines what you see is sexual women, women wanting sex, engaging in sex and that seems the norm.

Women who have low levels of desire think there is something wrong with them.

But if you’re working hard, if you’ve got kids, if you haven’t got much family support, it’s not surprising you’re not interested in sex at that time.

That is a perfectly normal response. We need to redesign what is abnormal

She went on to explain that fatigue, stress, work and children were major passion-killers:

Those factors really reduced women’s interest in spontaneous sex, as well as the extent to which they experienced desire in the actual sexual situation.

Continuing that another major turn-off was a lack of communication and consideration from a partner:

If a man wants sexual interaction then there’s a whole lot of things he can do that have nothing to do with sex. Washing dishes can be foreplay.

Professor McCabe and researcher Denisa Goldhammer will be further exploring women’s experiences of sexual desire in an online survey of over-18s in heterosexual relationships.

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 6:48 PM GMT

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Often Advertisers make the argument that thinness sells, and so that’s why they use very slim models.

However, Australian Psychologist Phillippa Diedrichs, at the University of Queensland, Australia, has conducted the first empirical research into how people perceive advertisements, as they relate to the size of the model, and how willing those consumers would be to buy products, based on the size of the model.

In the study, Diedrichs created a series of mock adverts for underwear, shampoo and a party dress. One group of adverts utilizing a size eight model, with the other group featured a size 12 woman.

Then, when these ads were shown to more than 300 young people, who were asked to rate how likely they would be to buy the products in the advertisements, and how they felt about their own body image after seeing the adverts. Diedrichs found no difference in the likelihood of respondents buying the advertised products, relative to whether they had seen the adverts featuring the skinnier model versus the ad showing the bigger woman. And, further, both men and women rated each set of advertisements as equally effective.

However, women who saw the size 12 models felt significantly better about their own bodies in comparison to those who saw the thinner models.

Ms Diedrichs explained that her research offered implications that could promote positive body image, saying:

It is often argued that only thin models will sell. However, my research indicates that average-size models may be just as effective in advertisements and that many consumers actually want to see more realistic models.

My research provides an evidence-base for this, by demonstrating that presenting more average-sized models in the media has the potential to improve body image.

 

Posted by Jonathan as Psychology, Sociology at 9:19 PM GMT

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You need to get out of a potentially awkward date with someone you swapped phone numbers with, while you were drunk?

Don’t worry, here’s a treasure trove of excuses to free up your time for something more fun:

I’d love to, but…

1. I have to floss my cat
2. I’ve dedicated my life to linguini
3. I want to spend more time with my blender
4. the President said he might drop in
5. the man on television told me to say tuned
6. I’ve been scheduled for a karma transplant
7. I’m staying home to work on my cottage cheese sculpture
8. it’s my parakeet’s bowling night
9. it wouldn’t be fair to the other Beautiful People
10. I’m building a pig from a kit
11. I did my own thing and now I’ve got to undo it
12. I’m enrolled in aerobic scream therapy
13. there’s a disturbance in the Force
14. I’m doing door-to-door collecting for static cling
15. I have to go to the Post office to see if I’m still wanted
16. I’m teaching my ferret to yodel
17. I have to check the freshness dates on my dairy products
18. I’m going through cherry cheesecake withdrawal
19. I’m planning to go downtown to try on gloves
20. my crayons all melted together
21. I’m trying to see how long I can go without saying yes
22. I’m in training to be a household pest
23. I’m getting my overalls overhauled
24. my patent is pending
25. I’m attending the opening of my garage door
26. I’m sandblasting my oven
27. I’m worried about my vertical hold
28. I’m going down to the bakery to watch the buns rise
29. I’m being deported
30. the grunion are running
31. I’ll be looking for a parking space
32. my Millard Filmore Fan Club meets then
33. the monsters haven’t turned blue yet, and I have to eat more dots
34. I’m taking punk totem pole carving
35. I have to fluff my shower cap
36. I’m converting my calendar watch from Julian to Gregorian
37. I’ve come down with a really horrible case of something or other
38. I made an appointment with a cuticle specialist
39. my plot to take over the world is thickening
40. I have to fulfil my potential
41. I don’t want to leave my comfort zone
42. it’s too close to the turn of the century
43. I have some real hard words to look up in the dictionary
44. my subconscious says no
45. I’m giving nuisance lessons at a convenience store
46. I left my body in my other clothes
47. the last time I went, I never came back
48. I’ve got a Friends of Rutabaga meeting
49. I have to answer all of my “occupant” letters
50. none of my socks match
51. I have to be on the next train to Bermuda
52. I’m having my plants neutered
53. people are blaming me for the Spanish-American War
54. I changed the lock on my door and now I can’t get out
55. I’m making a home movie called “The Thing That Grew in My Refrigerator”
56. I’m attending a perfume convention as guest Sniffer
57. my Yucca plant is feeling yucky
58. I’m touring China with a wok band
59. my chocolate-appreciation class meets that night
60. I never go out on days that end in “Y”
61. my mother would never let me hear the end of it
62. I’m running off to Yugoslavia with a foreign-exchange student named Basil Metabolism
63. I just picked up a book called “Glue in Many Lands” and I can’t put it down
64. I’m too old/young for that stuff
65. I have to wash/condition/perm/curl/tease/torment my hair
66. I have too much guilt
67. there are important world issues that need worrying about
68. I have to draw “Cubby” for an art scholarship
69. I’m uncomfortable when I’m alone or with others
70. I promised to help a friend fold road maps
71. I feel a song coming on
72. I’m trying to be less popular
73. my bathroom tiles need grouting
74. I have to bleach my hare
75. I’m waiting to see if I’m already a winner
76. I’m writing a love letter to Richard Simmons
77. you know how we psychos are
78. my favourite commercial is on TV
79. I have to study for a blood test
80. I’m going to be old someday
81. I’ve been traded to Cincinnati
82. I’m observing National Apathy Week
83. I have to rotate my crops
84. my Uncle escaped again
85. I’m up to my elbows in waxy build-up
86. I have to knit some dust bunnies for a charity bazaar
87. I’m having my baby shoes bronzed
88. I have to go to court for Kitty littering
89. I’m going to count the bristles in my toothbrush
90. I have to thaw some Karate chops for dinner
91. having fun gives me Prickly heat
92. I’m going to the Missing Persons Bureau, to see if anyone is looking for me
93. I have to jog my memory
94. my Palm reader advised against it
95. my ‘Dress for obscurity’ class meets then
96. I have to stay home and see if I snore
97. I prefer to remain an enigma
98. I think you want the OTHER [your name]
99. I have to sit up with a sick ant
100. I’m trying to cut down
101. … well, maybe

Posted by Jonathan as humour at 11:52 PM GMT

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One of the most important things you can do in any relationship is adjusting your listening style. It will change the way your man relates to you almost instantly. Have an actively listening style, and get him to talk to you about things he rarely gets to talk about at length. What you really want is for him to feel perfectly safe telling you almost anything.

Here’s why: The more you listen to him, the more he will open up. When you let him open up to you, you accomplish several results. By allowing uncritical listening, you allow him to feel extremely comfortable around you; and helping your prospective mate feel comfortable is one the most important things you can do, since you will have him to want to be around you often.

Plus there is another effect: It’s called transference, and is a powerful phenomenon. You might associate Sigmund Freud with this term or have memories from a Psychology class. Sigmund Freud coined the term and studied its effects at length after so many patients confessed their love to him during therapy. Freud ended up putting a screen between himself and his patients, but it didn’t help. Several types of professionals experience this all too common phenomenon today.

This happens for a few reasons: Unburdening themselves was pleasurable for patients in therapy because it alleviated stress, but more importantly it was the “transference of affection”. As your partner is exposing his personal history, thoughts, actions and desires, the affection he holds for these is being transferred to you, the listener. So, in the same way that Therapists, Counsellors, Clergymen and other professional who spend a lot of time listening uncritically find themselves the object of much affection, you too can use this principle to make a substantial and positive effect on his feelings towards you.

The term transference actually refers to transference of feelings. And by talking about life’s activities that produce heartfelt emotion, the feeling is transferred from some past event to the present. You are both the catalyst and the present entity, while this transference of emotion takes place, and the feelings become associated to you. Similarly, when men talk about a very pleasant subject (namely themselves) the affection for that subject then transfers to the catalyst once again, thus translating into more love for you. Just by listening to him, you can open up his affection for you, and keep it. Make no mistake about it, he needs someone who he can talk to, and you want to be the one.

Here’s how to make it work for you: Begin your uncritical listening by asking open-ended questions. These are questions that are not easily answered with a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Start with questions that are related to current situations in his life that you sense he is interested in. If you barely know him, this will be the easiest way to get him talking. Once he gets used to talking, start with asking him open-ended questions about his childhood, his parents, how he feels about his job and the people he’s close to. Try to mention the questions casually so that he doesn’t feel investigated, as he is not used to people being so interested and listening so intently. The fact that he is not used to this, is a benefit because it creates a uniquely satisfying interaction that he wants and needs, but it may take time before he is able to really talk openly about his feelings.

For instance, you walk by a house and say, “wow that house is so similar to mine, it reminds me of being five years old.” What was your house like when you were five? When he answers, don’t rush to comment. Make it clear that you are listening but don’t try to liken the situation to yours, your main purpose now is to get him to keep talking. Even if he answers with short answers at first, just keep listening, and he will start talking more. These are the type of questions that are good to get him to talk:

• Who are his favourite relatives?
• Why or when did he first think of becoming <whatever his occupation is>?
• What are some of the things he is proudest of in his life?
• Why are these accomplishments?
• What was he like as a little boy?
• How did he get along with his siblings?

Well, you get the idea. Everyone likes to talk about his or herself. That’s just human nature. By being the one he knows he can talk to, you make yourself an important part of his life.

Start today and see what happens. You will love the results.

Posted by Rosie as Philosophy, Psychology at 11:50 PM GMT

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Speed-dating is nothing more than a beauty pageant that may leave you feeling unlovable – because it’s more about looks rather than personality, claim scientists.

Forget your pick-up routines, researchers have found that the bigger the group of potential mates to select from, the more likely individuals are to make a decision based on looks and sex appeal alone.

Scientists believe that this is because in large groups, the chooser’s mind blanks at the array of choices – so they revert to basic instincts – and thus make their decision based on simpler criteria.

In birds and primates, as the size of the group increases, non-dominant individuals have a greater chance of being chosen as a mate. However, Alison Lenton, at the University of Edinburgh, and her team examined whether this might be true for humans too.

Lenton and her team studied 118 speed-dating sessions, with groups ranging in size from seven to 36 people; in which speed-daters raced through a series of “mini dates” each of about five minutes, and then invited whoever caught their fancy to get in touch again later.

To their surprise, the researchers discovered that as the size of the group increased, the offers became skewed towards just a few daters, whilst the least popular individuals ended up with fewer or no offers.

The researchers found that in smaller groups, people trade off different qualities in prospective mates – physical attractiveness for intelligence, for example. But, when faced with too much choice, they resort to crude approaches such as choosing solely on looks.

The team said:

When we have to make a quick decision like this, we don’t have much else to go on – and that’s because of our largely monogamous nature. Monogamous species have fewer secondary sexual characteristics such as peacocks’ colourful tail feathers.

To the question of does this matter? Miss Lenton responded:

Not if what you’re looking for is a quick fling. Research suggests that we don’t look too hard for signs that a short-term partner is our ideal mate.

However, Psychologist David Perrett, from the University of St Andrews, criticised the study for not looking at follow-up meetings, and cautioned:

It gets at the mechanics of speed-dating rather than of mate choice.

The research was published in the journal Animal Behaviour, but some notes from a prior presentation about dating and choice, given by Lenton and colleagues, can be seen here.

Posted by Jonathan as Anthropology, Psychology at 7:52 PM GMT

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More than a third of married couples in Japan have stopped having sex – many of them because they are too tired, or just can’t be bothered.

According to Government-backed medical researcher Kunio Kitamura, head of the Japan Family Planning Association, about 37 percent of couples surveyed this year said that they had not had sex for at least a month, compared with 32 percent in 2004.

His written survey involved 1,468 married men and women, with a maximum age of 49. The most common reason (given by a quarter of the males surveyed), was being too tired after work, whilst 19 percent of female participants said sex was too much of a hassle.

Kitamura said:

It’s a question of work-life balance; this is not something that the individual can tackle alone. The people who run companies need to do something about it.

The trend could have serious consequences for Japan, whose falling birth-rate and aging population are continuing headaches for the government. The average number of children born to a Japanese woman in her lifetime was 1.34 in 2007, compared with 2.1 in the United States in 2006.

Kitamura noted doctors may be partly to blame for Japan’s negative attitudes toward sex during pregnancy or after giving birth.

He is set to report to the Ministry of Health on his findings next year.

Posted by Jonathan as Anthropology, Sociology at 1:48 AM GMT

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Couples who spend more time getting intimate and finding ways to get close everyday may have lower levels of stress hormones in their bodies, a new study suggests.

The findings, reported in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, indicate that intimacy improves psychological health, but couples need to have a close relationship, or be happily marriage, to benefit.

Researchers from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, studied 51 working, mostly married, German couples for a period of one week, and found that those who reported more physical contact during any given day, whether it was sexual intercourse or just holding hands, generally had lower levels of the “stress” hormone Cortisol.

This was especially true of couples who reported more problems at work, suggesting that some physical affection between mates may be a buffer against work stress.

Many prior studies have suggested that chronic stress may have widespread effects in the body, from dampening the immune system response to contributing to heart disease. Meanwhile, other research has found that married people (at least those happily married) tend to be in better health and live longer lives.

According to Dr. Beate Ditzen, the study’s lead researcher:

It’s possible that the reduced stress response seen with physical affection helps to explain that link

Study participants kept detailed records of their daily activities, including instances of physical affection with their partner, and collected daily saliva samples so that the researchers could measure the fluctuations in Cortisol levels. The couples also recorded their mood at various points of each day, as Good, Relaxed, Alert, Bad, Tired or Fidgety.

In general, the researchers found, the more physical affection couples reported in a given day, the lower their Cortisol levels.

Importantly, Ditzen noted, intimacy was thought to improve hormone levels simply by boosting mood.

But, she stressed, that couples should not race to “express more intimacy, per se,” but rather find things to do together that create positive feelings for both partners.

For couples who do want to become physically intimacy, there are a range of ways to do it, according to Ditzen. She pointed out that “intimacy” meant different things to different couples in the study; to some it was sex, and to others, it was an affectionate touch:

This means that there is no specific behaviour that couples should show in everyday life, rather, all kinds of behaviour which couples themselves would consider intimate… might be beneficial.

Posted by Jonathan as Biochemistry, Sociology at 1:55 AM GMT

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Special interest groups often unfairly accuse the Media, Beauty pageants and associated organisations of promoting an unhealthy body image among women.

We have already shown that amongst Miss America winners, the numbers of low-weight individuals, both in total and across time is generally very small. On the other hand, female Porn stars are frequently much below average weight, when compared to the average woman, as we will show:

A list of the names of the most frequently downloaded female adult entertainers (n=50) was obtained from a site purporting to supply ‘Porn star desktop wallpapers‘. To this data set, the height and weight of the respective actresses was added, using information obtained from Wikipedia, and corrected where possible, using information from the performers own webpage.

Using the information collated, the following summary data was obtained:

For those who are interested in trivia, the following information was extracted from the compiled data set.

• Shortest Porn stars – 1.52m
  Julia Bond, Nicole Graves

• Tallest Porn stars – 1.78m
  Briana Banks, Carmella Bing, Jelena Jensen, Gianna Michaels, Nicole Sheridan

• Lightest Porn star – 40.82Kg
  Lacey Duvalle

• Heaviest Porn star – 65.77Kg
  Gianna Michaels

• Highest BMI Porn star – 22.9Kg/m²
  Katja Kassin

• Lowest BMI Porn star – 16.3Kg/m²
  Jenna Haze

The following graph shows the BMI frequency distribution of the Adult entertainers sampled.

From the compiled data set, fully 32% of the sample are below 18.5Kg/m², which is classed as Underweight, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and considered unhealthy.

To put this into context, using the compiled data set, the mean Pornographic actress is 1.64m tall, weighs 50.89Kg and has a BMI of 18.82. This contrasts sharply with the mean 25-34 year old UK woman, at 1.63m tall, 69.7Kg in weight, with a BMI of 26.1. Even compared to the weight of the mean Miss America winner, the average female Porn star weighs more than 4Kg less.

Now, since the Porn actresses in the sample were determined by the popularity of their desktop wallpaper downloads, we can eliminate the possibility that only low-weight women become Porn stars, and thus consumers of pornography have a restricted choice. Further, since market forces determined the ranking of the porn stars in the sample, we can also eliminate a media plot to miseducate people about body image or promote skinny models.

Now, it’s axiomatic that men would choose to download images of women that they desire to have sex with (assuming the opportunity arose), but this begs the question – if Sociobiologists are correct in telling us that males are attracted to women displaying signs of health and fertility, then why are unhealthy-weight adult performers so popular?

It seems that either the WHO is wrong in classifying low-weight women as unhealthy or Sociobiological ideas about males choosing healthy, fertile women for sex are incorrect.

Does anyone here have a more complete answer to this paradox?

Posted by Jonathan as Analysis, Sociobiology at 11:00 PM GMT

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Amongst people in their 30s and 40s, and in partnerships where there is an age difference of five or more years, condom use is particularly low.

Nearly 70 percent of those aged between 16 and 19 used a condom with a new partner, compared to 38 percent of men and 29 percent of women aged between 35 and 44, a new study has shown.

This worrying news comes as the number of people diagnosed with sexually transmitted infections (STIs) was shown to have risen by a quarter in just five years, and has sparked calls for an urgent drive to promote condoms to all age groups, and not just young people.

The researchers also found that where there was an age difference between partners of five years or more (regardless of whether the man or woman was older), 44.1% of respondents reported using condoms at first sex, compared to 60.8% in partnerships that were closer in age.

The figures, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, showed that although the overall number of heterosexual people using condoms for first time sex stood at 55 percent, that figures declined with age.

Author, Dr Catherine Mercer, a lecturer at the Centre for Sexual Health & HIV Research, University College London, said:

Our finding that condom use at first sex declined with increasing age is of concern.

Although a disproportionate amount of partnerships are formed among people in their teens and 20s, the fact is that about 45 percent of marriages are now expected to end in divorce, which means that the ‘population attributable risk’ by those in their 30s and 40s will increase.

Increasing rates of STIs diagnosed among those in their 30s and 40s suggest that interventions that promote consistent condom use with new partners are urgently required.

Not just for young people as has been the focus recently, but for people in their 30s and 40s and older who are increasingly forming new partnerships.

Commenting on her age difference findings, Dr Mercer said:

This may reflect unequal power relations, so that younger people in such partnerships may not have the necessary communication and negotiation skills to ensure safe sex with older partners. This finding may have implications for sex and relationship education and counselling. Improving negotiation skills for women and men may facilitate communication and, in turn, increase the likelihood of condom use in such partnerships.

The researchers analysed the responses of 11,161 people (of whom 6,399 were women), who were interviewed about the last 12 months of their heterosexual relationships, for the second British National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal 2).

Participants were asked about their three most recent partnerships and questioned about condom use, age differences in the relationship, where they met and how soon after meeting they had sex.

Of the 11,161 respondents, 9,598 reported a total of 15,488 heterosexual partnerships in the past year. A higher proportion of men’s partnerships were described as “not regular” – 39.1% compared to 20% of women’s partnerships; while a higher proportion of women’s partnerships were marriages or cohabitations – 55.2% versus 38.9% of men’s partnerships.

Men reported having sex sooner after first meeting a partner than women, with one in five men reporting sex within 24 hours of meeting their partner, compared with just one in 10 women.

Posted by Jonathan as Biology, Sociology at 11:09 PM GMT

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