“The Male Desperation Study” LOL
The perception exists in society that men are interested in sleeping around and “sewing their wild oats” while women are more interested in meeting “Mr. Right” and settling down. In other words, it is a common perception that men are more willing to have sex with many different partners and even with complete strangers, than are women.
This classic study shows men are far more willing to have sex with a stranger than women are. As psychologists, we have to ask the question, “why?”
But does the research support this idea that men are more promiscuous than women? As you will see, it does. But is this the fault of men, or are they simply behaving the way they have evolved to?
The studies conducted by conducted by Clark and Hatfield in (1978 and 1982) posed this question: “How receptive are men versus women to sexual invitations?”
In both experiments, five college women and four college men from an experimental social psychology class acted as confederates. They were instructed to stand in an area of the college campus and approach members of the opposite gender. They were instructed to only approach those that they found attractive and would be willing to actually sleep with (in any other scenario, presumably). When the confederates spotted someone they liked they said: “I have been noticing you around campus. I found you to be very attractive.” They then asked one of three different questions:
In total, 48 men and 48 women were asked these questions from a member of the opposite gender (i.e. 16 each question). The results of both studies were very similar, as you can see in the images below.
As you can see, both sexes responded similarly to a request for a date. However, when it came to going to an apartment or going to bed (i.e. having sex), the males were far more willing to agree (75%) than the women (0%).
This second field experiment four years later got remarkably similar results to the previous study, further strengthening the evidence for the existence of distinctly different gender-related sexual behaviours.
What we see from the above results is that males are far more willing to have sex with a stranger than females, despite the fact that both genders were about the same in their willingness to go on a date. What’s even more surprising, and I’m sorry guys but it doesn’t look good for us, is that men were more willing to have sex with a stranger than they were willing to go on a date.