Research
shows we think young people have a lot more sex than they do in
reality – and men have a particularly skewed view of the sex lives of
young women.
The
average guess about young men in both countries is that they had sex
14 times in the last month. But the actual number is just
five
in Britain and
four
in the US, according to detailed surveys of sexual behaviour.
Our
guess would mean that, on average, young men are having sex every
other day – around 180 times a year – compared with the more mundane
reality of around 50 times. But that’s not the most remarkable error
in our guessing. Men are even more wildly wrong when they guess about
young women’s sex lives, in both the US and Britain.
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Men
think young women are having an incredible amount of sex – 22 times a
month in Britain, and 23 times a month in the US. These guesses would
be the equivalent of the average young woman having sex every weekday,
plus two or three times on one special day each month. In reality,
it’s around five times.
As
with so many of our misperceptions, the explanations for this will be
both how we think and what we’re told.
"
The
survival of our species literally depends on sex – yet it is a
hotbed of misperceptions
The
survival of our species literally depends on sex. Yet it is a hotbed
of misperceptions. Unlike many other core human behaviours, where we
can get a better idea of social norms from observation, sex mostly
happens behind firmly closed doors (and the sex that is available for
general viewing is not a fully accurate representation of the norm).
The
rise of dating apps like Tinder may make us think other people's
sex lives are much more colourful (Credit: Alamy)
Because
we don’t have access to very much real-life comparative information,
we turn to other ‘authoritative' sources: playground or locker room
chat, dubious surveys, salacious media coverage and porn. These
provide extreme examples and dodgy anecdotes that distort our views of
reality.
In
the same survey, we asked people in three countries to guess how many
sexual partners people in their country have had by the time they get
to 45-54 years of age. On this, people are actually very accurate at
guessing the average number of partners reported by men.
The
actual figure in Australia and Britain is an average of 17 partners by
the time men reach 45–54. In the US, it’s 19. The average guesses are
almost spot-on.
"
Women
claim to have had almost half the number of sexual partners as men
But
it gets much more interesting when we compare men and women. First,
the standout pattern is with the actual data. The number of partners
claimed by women in surveys of sexual behaviour is much, much lower
than the number claimed by men.
In
fact, women claim to have had almost half the number of sexual
partners as men. This is one of the great conundrums of sexual
behaviour measurement: it’s seen again and again in high-quality sex
surveys, but it’s a statistical impossibility.
Given
that both men and women are reporting pairings, and they make up
roughly equal proportions of the (heterosexual) population, the
numbers should roughly match.
American
men thought American women had had twice as many partners as the
real average (Credit: Alamy)
There
are a number of
suggested
explanations for this – everything from men’s use of
prostitutes to how the different genders interpret the question (for
example, if women discount some sexual practices that men count).
But
it seems most likely to be a mix of men’s tendency to be more
rough
and ready when they add up combined with men’s conscious or
unconscious bumping up of their figure, and women’s tendency to
deflate theirs.
There
is evidence of the latter effect from a
US
study among students which split the participants into
three groups before asking them about their sexual behaviour. One
group of women was left alone to fill out the questionnaire as normal.
Another was led to believe that their answers could be seen by someone
supervising the experiment. And the third was attached to a fake lie
detector machine.
"
These
guesses point to some frighteningly wrong views of young people and
women, particularly among a small section of men
The
group of women who thought their answers may be seen claimed an
average of 2.6 sexual partners, the standard anonymous questionnaire
group said 3.4 on average, while those attached to the useless beeping
machine said 4.4 – which was in line with the men in the study.
There
is one final worrying twist in the US data. Men and women guess very
differently for women in the US. American men think that American
women have had 27 partners on average, but American women guess only
13, which is much closer to the figure women claim for themselves of
12.
In
one study, women wired up to a fake lie detector wrote down a
much higher number of sexual partners (Credit: Alamy)
This
ludicrously high average guess among men for US women is largely due
to a small number of US men who think that US women have an incredible
number of partners. In fact, there were around 20 US men in our sample
of 1,000 that went for numbers of 50 or (sometimes way) above, and
that skews the data.
Our
misperceptions reveal a lot about how we see the world. They are a
brilliant clue to our deep-seated biases, as our guesses at what is
‘normal’ are more automatic and unguarded. In this study, these
guesses point to some frighteningly wrong views of young people and
women, particularly among a small section of men.
As
with other misperceptions, the answer is not just to bombard people
with more facts to correct these views, but to also deal with the
underlying causes – that what we’re told and how we think leads many
of us to get so much so wrong.