Finland’s rating the highest but Britain ahead of other big Western industrial nations
1 December 2008
LONDON: British men and women are now the most promiscuous of any big Western industrial country, London’s Sunday Times reported yesterday, citing an international study.
In an index measuring one-night stands, total numbers of partners and attitudes to casual sex, Britain comes out ahead of Australia, the United States, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany, the newspaper said.
The researchers behind the study, led by Professor David Schmitt, a professor of psychology at Bradley University in Illinois, say high scores such as Britain’s may be linked to the way society is increasingly willing to accept sexual promiscuity among women as well as men.
The study was conducted by asking more than 14,000 people in 48 countries and regions to fill in anonymous questionnaires. Singapore was not included.
Respondents were asked about numbers of partners and one-night stands, and their attitudes were assessed by asking them how many people they expected to sleep with over the next five years and how comfortable they were with the idea of casual sex.
The results were combined into an index of so-called ‘sociosexuality’, a measure of how sexually liberal people are in thought and behaviour, The Times said. Most individuals scored between four and 65.
Finland scored the highest average rating of 51. Taiwan came lowest, with 19.
Britain scored 40, placing it 11th overall, behind countries such as Latvia, Croatia and Slovenia - but its rating was the highest among the major Western industrial nations, the Times noted.
It said Britain’s ranking was ascribed to factors such as the decline of religious scruples about extramarital sex, the growth of equal pay and equal rights for women and a highly sexualised popular culture.
The first tranche of research was published in 2005 but analyses have continued and Prof Schmitt described the latest in this week’s edition of New Scientist.
Prof Schmitt said the researchers believe that, among certain age groups and at certain times, men and women are equally liberal.
‘Historically, we have repressed women’s short-term mating and there are all sorts of double standards out there where men’s short-term mating was sort of acceptable but women’s wasn’t,’ Prof Schmitt was quoted as saying in New Scientist.
‘When you free a society by giving women ample resources, ample day care and so on, then you see high sociosexuality scores in both men and women.’
In more liberal countries such as Britain, women may even be becoming more promiscuous than men, Prof Schmitt said.
Such trends, said the Times, are typified by the television series, Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, in which Billie Piper played a middle-class prostitute who relished her numerous sexual encounters.
One predictor of promiscuity that cuts across cultural differences is family background, the study found.
‘In every culture, men that scored highly on dismissing attachment tended to be more short-term oriented or higher in sociosexuality,’ Prof Schmitt said in New Scientist.
Such insecurity is thought to arise from stress during childhood when parents are unresponsive or unable to give consistent investment. ‘Secure men tended to be more monogamous,’ he added. Results for women were similar, and the underlying factor is trust.
‘If a person was high in being able to trust other people, they were monogamous,’ said Prof Schmitt. ‘If they were very low in trust, they were much more likely to be unrestricted in sociosexuality.’
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British Top in Casual Sex League
Finland’s rating the highest but Britain ahead of other big Western industrial nations
1 December 2008
LONDON: British men and women are now the most promiscuous of any big Western industrial country, London’s Sunday Times reported yesterday, citing an international study.
In an index measuring one-night stands, total numbers of partners and attitudes to casual sex, Britain comes out ahead of Australia, the United States, France, the Netherlands, Italy and Germany, the newspaper said.
The researchers behind the study, led by Professor David Schmitt, a professor of psychology at Bradley University in Illinois, say high scores such as Britain’s may be linked to the way society is increasingly willing to accept sexual promiscuity among women as well as men.
The study was conducted by asking more than 14,000 people in 48 countries and regions to fill in anonymous questionnaires. Singapore was not included.
Respondents were asked about numbers of partners and one-night stands, and their attitudes were assessed by asking them how many people they expected to sleep with over the next five years and how comfortable they were with the idea of casual sex.
The results were combined into an index of so-called ‘sociosexuality’, a measure of how sexually liberal people are in thought and behaviour, The Times said. Most individuals scored between four and 65.
Finland scored the highest average rating of 51. Taiwan came lowest, with 19.
Britain scored 40, placing it 11th overall, behind countries such as Latvia, Croatia and Slovenia - but its rating was the highest among the major Western industrial nations, the Times noted.
It said Britain’s ranking was ascribed to factors such as the decline of religious scruples about extramarital sex, the growth of equal pay and equal rights for women and a highly sexualised popular culture.
The first tranche of research was published in 2005 but analyses have continued and Prof Schmitt described the latest in this week’s edition of New Scientist.
Prof Schmitt said the researchers believe that, among certain age groups and at certain times, men and women are equally liberal.
‘Historically, we have repressed women’s short-term mating and there are all sorts of double standards out there where men’s short-term mating was sort of acceptable but women’s wasn’t,’ Prof Schmitt was quoted as saying in New Scientist.
‘When you free a society by giving women ample resources, ample day care and so on, then you see high sociosexuality scores in both men and women.’
In more liberal countries such as Britain, women may even be becoming more promiscuous than men, Prof Schmitt said.
Such trends, said the Times, are typified by the television series, Secret Diary Of A Call Girl, in which Billie Piper played a middle-class prostitute who relished her numerous sexual encounters.
One predictor of promiscuity that cuts across cultural differences is family background, the study found.
‘In every culture, men that scored highly on dismissing attachment tended to be more short-term oriented or higher in sociosexuality,’ Prof Schmitt said in New Scientist.
Such insecurity is thought to arise from stress during childhood when parents are unresponsive or unable to give consistent investment. ‘Secure men tended to be more monogamous,’ he added. Results for women were similar, and the underlying factor is trust.
‘If a person was high in being able to trust other people, they were monogamous,’ said Prof Schmitt. ‘If they were very low in trust, they were much more likely to be unrestricted in sociosexuality.’
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