MSNBC/AP: Lust trumps love when it comes to having sex for college students

[heyholetsgogrant]

Lust trumps love when it comes to having sex

Study finds there aren’t many gender differences in reasons for intimacy

Sexploration — By Brian Alexander

Source: The Associated Press

Men eye faces, while women gaze at sex

Updated: 7:19 p.m. ET July 31, 2007

WASHINGTON - After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations.

It’s more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.

College-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex — they were attracted to the person, they wanted to experience physical pleasure and “it feels good,” according to a peer-reviewed study in the August edition of Archives of Sexual Behavior. Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.

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Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women, but they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: “I was attracted to the person.”

Researchers at the University of Texas spent five years and their own money to study the overlooked why behind sex while others were spending their time on the how.

Top reasons for having sex

The top and bottom reasons for having sex from a list of 237 that college-aged men and women gave University of Texas researchers:

Men's top 10 reasons:

1. I was attracted to the person.

2. It feels good.

3. I wanted to experience physical pleasure.

4. It’s fun.

5. I wanted to show my affection to the person.

6. I was sexually aroused and wanted the release.

7. I was “horny.”

8. I wanted to express my love for the person.

9. I wanted to achieve an orgasm.

10. I wanted to please my partner.

Women's top 10 reasons:

1. I was attracted to the person.

2. I wanted to experience physical pleasure.

3. It feels good.

4. I wanted to show my affection to the person.

5. I wanted to express my love for the person.

6. I was sexually aroused and wanted the release.

7. I was “horny.”

8. It’s fun.

9. I realized I was in love.

10. I was “in the heat of the moment.”

Men's bottom 5 reasons:

1. The person offered to give me drugs for doing it.

2. I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease.

3. I wanted to punish myself.

4. I wanted to break up my relationship.

5. I wanted to get a job.

Women's bottom 5 reasons:

1. I wanted to give someone else a sexually transmitted disease.

2. Someone offered me money to do it.

3. I wanted to get a raise.

4. It was an initiation rite to a club or organization.

5. I wanted to get a job.

“It’s refuted a lot of gender stereotypes ... that men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love,” said University of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, the study’s co-author. “That’s not what I came up with in my findings.”

Few gender differences

Forget thinking that men are from Mars and women from Venus, “the more we look, the more we find similarity,” said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego. Goldstein, who wasn’t part of Meston’s study, said the Texas research made a lot of sense and adds to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders may only be among people with sexual problems.

Source: AP/MSNBC

Full Article Click Here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20059548/

[rincewind]

Another hard hitting 'duh' investigation. :doh:

[heyholetsgogrant]

Another hard hitting 'duh' investigation. :doh:

:laugh: exactly, I always wonder why they wasted money on these studies. I remember there was a study done a few years back that said people are attracted to each other more and think they look better when drunk :doh:

-Grant

[willmb5]

Really?....NO!......Wait....Really?

[Henry]

2. It feels good.

3. I wanted to experience physical pleasure.

4. It’s fun.

Uh ... aren't these all the same thing??

[PF Chang]

Uh ... aren't these all the same thing??

:laugh: Especially 2 and 3. What the hell?

[frommd]

Would love to hear the difference between...

Men's top 10 reasons:

6. I was sexually aroused and wanted the release.

7. I was “horny.”

9. I wanted to achieve an orgasm.

Anybody else get the feeling the people doing this study weren't getting any?

[China]

Ah, another study from the Captain Obvious Research Institute. I'm constantly amazed at how much money is wasted funding studies that tell us things we already know.

:obvious:

[nace14]

i can't believe "I was offered drugs" and "i wanted to give somebody an STD" weren't 1 and 2 in texas.

[Cheers, Beers and Mountaineers]

This is news to me.

[PleaseBlitz]

What were they expecting to find? Something different?

Funny how "I was drunk" isnt on that list. :laugh: Should be #2 or 3.

[techboy]

I think you guys are missing the point, somewhat.

The point is not that college students act out of lust instead of love, it's that men and women have the same motivations.

I know this has been changing, but the standard perception is that guys have sex for lust, but girls have to be convinced they are in love.

If nothing else, it's the basis for much of our society's literature and films, and this study challenges that.

Also, I'm about as anti-spending as a person can get, but to decry studies that determine the obvious seems a little short-sighted as well. How are we going to get studies that arrive at the non-obvious, if we don't test things that seem obvious on their face?

[Leonard Washington]

its strange that the women didn't want an orgasm

[rincewind]

I think you guys are missing the point, somewhat.

The point is not that college students act out of lust instead of love, it's that men and women have the same motivations.

I know this has been changing, but the standard perception is that guys have sex for lust, but girls have to be convinced they are in love.

If nothing else, it's the basis for much of our society's literature and films, and this study challenges that.

Also, I'm about as anti-spending as a person can get, but to decry studies that determine the obvious seems a little short-sighted as well. How are we going to get studies that arrive at the non-obvious, if we don't test things that seem obvious on their face?

tech, they could have rented a 'Girls Gone Wild' video and reached the same conclusion for a $3.50 Blockbuster rental charge.

[Henry]

I think the point, TB, is that if the study is so sloppy as to include such ambiguous responses, it's difficult to know exactly what the respondants really think. If a half dozen answers mean exactly the same thing, who knows how the votes were split?

Are college girls interested in having a good time too? Yeah, I don't think that needed scientific verification.

There might be a few small bits of information to glean from this mess ("I wanted to please my partner" being higher on the men's list suprises me, for example) but overall I think it was badly done, and a waste of time and money.

[nuposse87]

what if the primary reason was that we were schwasted? Does That falls under fun?

[techboy]

I suspect (without having read more than the blurb ) that what went on here is that rather than pigeonhole students with a multiple-choice style survey, which has its own inherent problems, because people many times don't see an exact match among the choices, they just had each student write down his or her answer and then they compiled them.

In some ways, it's a little more sloppy, but without reading the actual study's procedures and how they attempted to control for these variances statistically, it's difficult for me to make more of a judgement about it.

Actually, since there's no way I'm going to spend my time doing so, I'd say it's impossible.

In any case, I just thought I'd point out that the stated point of the study is not what you guys are mocking.

[dwbiggs]

Lust trumps love when it comes to having sex for college students

Well...duuhhh!!! Don't tell me this study got funded.

[TheLongshot]

The point is not that college students act out of lust instead of love, it's that men and women have the same motivations.

To be fair, that is also a "duh" point as well. When I was in college over 15 years ago, I certainly knew enough women who were driven out of lust more than having a "relationship".

Course, I didn't really understand it myself until it was a little late to turn it to my advantage. The problem is, a lot of men are still bound by older social conventions. That's why we still have men who want to "protect" their daughters, when it could very well be that their daughter is the instigator of the activity.

This is only a surprise to those who haven't been paying attention for 20-30 years.

Jason

[TheLongshot]

And on the other side: Smart kids have less sex

Jason

[codeorama]

The true interpretations:

Men's top 10 reasons:

1. I was attracted to the person. (She was HOTT and I had to hit it...)

2. It feels good. (She was ugly and I was drunk)

3. I wanted to experience physical pleasure. (She was really ugly)

4. It’s fun. (I was bored)

5. I wanted to show my affection to the person. (I told her I wanted to show affection to her)

6. I was sexually aroused and wanted the release. (I was going to spank the monkey and she showed up unexpectedly)

7. I was “horny.” (see above)

8. I wanted to express my love for the person. (See number 5)

9. I wanted to achieve an orgasm. (See number 6)

10. I wanted to please my partner. (yeah, right...)

[Henry]

I suspect (without having read more than the blurb ) that what went on here is that rather than pigeonhole students with a multiple-choice style survey, which has its own inherent problems, because people many times don't see an exact match among the choices, they just had each student write down his or her answer and then they compiled them.

In some ways, it's a little more sloppy, but without reading the actual study's procedures and how they attempted to control for these variances statistically, it's difficult for me to make more of a judgement about it.

Actually, since there's no way I'm going to spend my time doing so, I'd say it's impossible.

In any case, I just thought I'd point out that the stated point of the study is not what you guys are mocking.

Perhaps. That would make more sense I guess.

However, I got the impression it was a 'multiple choice' deal because the article listed the bottom five reasons. If they were spontaneous reasons offered by participants, representing given answers as least popular answers is misleading, because the least popular reasons would be the ones not listed at all.

Again, seems sloppy to me. Maybe it's just the way the article presented it.

But sure, I'm just going with my first impressions. Sue me.