237 reasons people have sex
A friend of mine is taking a sex class at Harvard. She told me about a study they read that found there are 237 reasons that people have sex. It was written up in the NYTimes a few years back.
Per the abstract of the study, the first part used a nomination procedure to identify “237 expressed reasons for having sex, ranging from the mundane (e.g., ‘I wanted to experience physical pleasure’) to the spiritual (e.g., ‘I wanted to get closer to God’), from altruistic (e.g., ‘I wanted the person to feel good about himself/herself’) to vengeful (e.g., ‘I wanted to get back at my partner for having cheated on me’).”
The second part of the study asked 1,549 participants (granted all undergraduates ages 18-22) to evaluate the degree to which each of the 237 reasons led them to have sex. Factor analyses yielded four large factors - Physical, Goal Attainment, Emotional, and Insecurity - and 13 subfactors within those.
Some key findings:
- Men and women were remarkably similar in that 8 of the top 10 and 20 of the top 25 reasons given were identical for men and women.
- Men showed greater endorsement of having sex for physical reasons (“The person had a desirable body”) and because the opportunity presented itself (“The person was available”).
- Men exceeded women on items pertaining to physical pleasure (“I wanted to have an orgasm”), improving social status (“I wanted to brag about my conquests”), improving their sexual experience (“I wanted to improve my sexual skills”), and utiliatarian reasons (“I wanted to change the topic of conversation”).
- Women showed greater endorsement of having sex for loving reasons (“I wanted to express my love for the person” or “I realized that I was in love”).
Here’s the original paper!
