would have to be explained by items 4 to 7, which have relatively low weights!
Item 4 is the killer. It is actually heavily weighted in the paper you link, though not in all versions of the SOI. You can score a 50 without ever having had sex or ever expecting to have sex, and up to 32 of those points can come from a response to 4. 4 is obviously not zero sum and need not average out.
There is very good reason to believe that men fantasize about sex more often than women (who buys most pornography?), and there is also reason to believe men are more likely to fantasize about persons other than their current partner. It’s also possible that “once per day” is actually relatively infrequent given how often men think about sex. Put these together and it can explain a lot of the variance. The paper does not show breakdown by answers, at least not that I saw.
It’s also worth noting they had some significant response-rate issues (RR < .5 for some demographics). If women who like casual sex, are promiscuous, or are prostitutes are less likely to respond than all other groups, that could explain the variance.
Also, there are other versions of the ROI that don’t need to average out, as they lump large numbers together (i.e. “More than 8”).
There’s a social norm supporting female “purity” that’s still lingering after a couple hundred years. There is a lot of guilt (particularly of the religious variety) directed towards sexuality, and particularly female sexuality since, (A) the church was run and funded by men and (B) women can get pregnant. Conversely, standards of masculinity developed for men that were rather explicitly pro-sexual, starting at least in the early 1900′s and remaining quite prevalent today.
Society continues to have very different standards for appropriate sexual behaviour for men and women. The anecdotal and cultural evidence (e.g. there’s no female James Bond, at least not in terms of promiscuity) that supports substantially different cultural pressures is overwhelming and too extensive to enumerate here. It’s my understanding that a lot of women (obviously not all, but probably a much larger proportion than men) may have fantasies that are more romantic than actively sexual as a result of developing their sexuality under existing social pressure.
Also, if you believe love is necessary to be comfortable with sex, sexual fantasies about non-partners seem much less likely, and based on substantial anecdotal experience, as well as rather clear cultural norms, men are less likely to believe love is a prerequisite for sex.
There are also plenty of ev-psych reasons why it would be more adaptive for men to be deeply interested in sex and women to be less interested in it / more interested in romance. I don’t put much weight in this view, given the complex history of how men and women’s sexuality has been viewed and expressed, but there it is.
I certainly agree with the usefulness of a breakdown by question, though.
Psychohistorian nails it. Items 4-7 could plausibly account for the wide gender differences. And even if they didn’t completely, then we still have the response rate issue, and differences in optimism in 2.
Item 4 is the killer. It is actually heavily weighted in the paper you link, though not in all versions of the SOI. You can score a 50 without ever having had sex or ever expecting to have sex, and up to 32 of those points can come from a response to 4. 4 is obviously not zero sum and need not average out.
There is very good reason to believe that men fantasize about sex more often than women (who buys most pornography?), and there is also reason to believe men are more likely to fantasize about persons other than their current partner. It’s also possible that “once per day” is actually relatively infrequent given how often men think about sex. Put these together and it can explain a lot of the variance. The paper does not show breakdown by answers, at least not that I saw.
It’s also worth noting they had some significant response-rate issues (RR < .5 for some demographics). If women who like casual sex, are promiscuous, or are prostitutes are less likely to respond than all other groups, that could explain the variance.
Also, there are other versions of the ROI that don’t need to average out, as they lump large numbers together (i.e. “More than 8”).
I don’t see that as obvious. The obvious counter-argument is “who buys most romance novels?”, which are basically a different medium for porn.
I would love to see breakdown by question, if anyone can find a paper with that.
There’s a social norm supporting female “purity” that’s still lingering after a couple hundred years. There is a lot of guilt (particularly of the religious variety) directed towards sexuality, and particularly female sexuality since, (A) the church was run and funded by men and (B) women can get pregnant. Conversely, standards of masculinity developed for men that were rather explicitly pro-sexual, starting at least in the early 1900′s and remaining quite prevalent today.
Society continues to have very different standards for appropriate sexual behaviour for men and women. The anecdotal and cultural evidence (e.g. there’s no female James Bond, at least not in terms of promiscuity) that supports substantially different cultural pressures is overwhelming and too extensive to enumerate here. It’s my understanding that a lot of women (obviously not all, but probably a much larger proportion than men) may have fantasies that are more romantic than actively sexual as a result of developing their sexuality under existing social pressure.
Also, if you believe love is necessary to be comfortable with sex, sexual fantasies about non-partners seem much less likely, and based on substantial anecdotal experience, as well as rather clear cultural norms, men are less likely to believe love is a prerequisite for sex.
There are also plenty of ev-psych reasons why it would be more adaptive for men to be deeply interested in sex and women to be less interested in it / more interested in romance. I don’t put much weight in this view, given the complex history of how men and women’s sexuality has been viewed and expressed, but there it is.
I certainly agree with the usefulness of a breakdown by question, though.
Psychohistorian nails it. Items 4-7 could plausibly account for the wide gender differences. And even if they didn’t completely, then we still have the response rate issue, and differences in optimism in 2.