Posted June 14, Note: What follows is an adaptation of a previous article I wrote for the web site Science Of Relationships. Men are more interested and likely to engage in casual sex than women, right?
From film, to music, to magazines-- it's one of those things everyone seemingly "knows" about the respective sexes that is pervasive in popular culture. Visit your local bookstore's self-help section and you're likely to a see volumes for example, the " Mars and Venus " series dedicated to understanding how suchsex differences should be understood if we're to experience relational and sexual bliss.
New research, however, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows that when great pleasure is expected, women are just as likely as men to say "YES" to casual sex. The innovative set of studies 1 carried out by Dr. This perspective argues that sexual reproduction is a bi-product of sexual pleasure, rather than vice-versa.
We've evolved to seek pleasurable experiences; if enough people are having pleasure through sex, then the species will reproduce as a consequence. And herein lies perhaps the most pertinent sex difference of all-- women generally have a more difficult time achieving sexual pleasure from a casual encounter than men. Conley's work suggests that when the conditions are right, women are more similar to men in how they respond to an offer for casual sex than previously has been thought.
The greatest contribution to explaining if a woman will accept an offer for casual sex is her perception of how sexually pleasurable the encounter will be.
