A University of Alberta professor of psychology has learned men tend to overestimate the number of sexual partners they’ve had, and he’s come up with some interesting theories to explain why they do this. Psychology professor Dr. Norman Brown said while some people might conclude this happens because “men are pigs,” there is in fact, important information to be gathered from his survey of approximately 1,100 Albertans, who were asked to recall how many sexual partners they had had during their lives. From the University of Alberta:
Men Tend to Overestimate the Number of Sexual Partners they Have Had
Contact: Wanda Vivequin
780 492 3808
wanda.vivequin@ualberta.ca
A University of Alberta professor of psychology has learned men tend to overestimate the number of sexual partners they’ve had, and he’s come up with some interesting theories explain why the do this.
Psychology professor Dr. Norman Brown said while some people might conclude this happens because “men are pigs,” there is in fact, important information to be gathered from his survey of approximately 1,100 Albertans, who were asked to recall how many sexual partners they had had during their lives.
“Some would say men overestimate the number of partners they have had because they are pigs and like to boast and brag about their conquests,” Brown said.
“From my research over the last 20 years, I know there is much more to it than this,” he said. Brown works in the area of cognitive psychology and is interested in how people acquire, organize, and utilize real-world knowledge (i.e., facts about the world learned through experience).
In 1999, together with research partner Dr. Robert Sinclair, Brown surveyed University of Alberta students on the same question about numbers of sexual partners and came up with similar results. In this more recent survey, conducted with the help of the U of A Population Research Laboratory, a cross section of heterosexual men and women throughout Alberta were asked how many sexual partners they’ve had in their lives. After they answered this question, they were asked how they came up the number they gave.
When asked the question, ‘how many partners have you had in your lifetime?’, two-thirds of women said they knew precisely and reported an average of 6.2. Men on the other hand were twice as likely to say they had no idea and on average guessed 11.9.
Brown said this result was most interesting.
“Every time a man has sex with a woman, a woman has to have sex with a man. So either there are some very lucky joes out there or someone is not getting their numbers right,” Brown said.
By asking respondents how they came up with their number, Brown was able to work out what methods men and women were more likely to use when calculating the number of sexual partners.
He found that men were twice as likely as women to use a rough approximation method, while women were more likely to think about individual incidents and calculate the number this way. People who had had few sexual partners were the most likely to use the reasoning “I just know.”
It remains, however, unclear as to how male overestimation could result in such a wide disparity in the reported number of lifetime sexual partners. Brown has three theories, none of which are very flattering to men. One is that men cannot be bothered to remember individual lovers. The next is that men are lazy and have not got the patience to think seriously when answering a telephone poll, and the third one is his ‘Don Juan’ theory that there might in fact be a number of men in Alberta who have been, in Brown’s words, “lucky joes.”
Brown said his findings have applicability in a number of areas, including strategies for dealing with people who engage in high-risk sexual behaviour.
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6 to 11 seem not to be true that’s why brown had to figure out
The were the men got their extra 5 women .
part of the difference of numbers between men and women may be what they consider “sex” to be. I know that some heavy petting, especially if it involved genital touching, to be reported by the man a “sex” and by the woman as not “sex”. This information comes from hearing both sides of the stories over the years. Slight penitration most likely be reported by the man as having sex and by the woman as not.
Men over report….women under report….
this is an old myth, that men exaggerate their numbers of sex partners. in fact, recent studies have shown women conciously report lower sex partners than they actually had. women who were told to be connected to a lie detector devise (which was a lie in itself by the way
) reported more sex partners. while men did not report different numbers in the same scenario.
much more likely than men exaggerating is the idea that women play down their promiscuity in order not to be labelled a slut.
i am amazed that Dr Brown has wasted 20 years of his research career. why he concluded that men are at fault is puzzling to me!? should he not have checked for honesty in his study subjects first???
I think the other comment about is correct… To clarify…
It is a known fact that women, if they desire, can get a man into bed a lot easier than a man can get a woman into bed… Normally, however, the man is doing the trying…
Now, imagine, if you will… a woman who is sexually promiscuous… She may have 20 or 30 partners before she is 30 years old (I know one like this).
It only takes a few “active” women like this, to inflate men’s numbers to 11 or so on average… while many of her friends are sticking to 3 or 4 guys. The *average* woman will then have fewer partners than the *average* man… but from my experience, women are more likely, if they’re promiscuous, to be able to rack up HUGE numbers of “partners” whereas a guy who throws the curve that way is rarer. Just think of life as a frat party with 20 guys and one girl… the other 19 girls are sitting at home wondering where the action that all these 20 guys are talking about is at
maybe the variance for the number of sexual partnersis actually larger for women, so 6 of these men’s sexual partners consisted of women who had about 6 partners, and the other five partners where uber-sluts who for obvious reason might underestimate there sexual activity