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.

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Posted by Jonathan in Psychology, Sociobiology

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