This study comes from Cindy Meston, PhD, and David Buss, PhD, of the psychology department at the University of Texas at Austin.
First, they asked 203 men and 241 women aged 17-52 in Austin, Texas, to anonymously list every reason they had ever had sex. Those men and women were taking psychology classes or were participating in other studies at the Sexual Psychophysiology Laboratory of the University of Texas.
All in all, participants listed 715 reasons for having sex. The researchers deleted repetitions, boiling the list down to 237 reasons.
Next, Meston and Buss presented the list to 1,549 psychology students and asked them to rate how often, if ever, they had had sex for each of the 237 reasons.
| 9 Leading Reasons for Having Sex
The researchers identified nine broad themes that characterize the students’ top reasons for having sex:
The study also highlights five general themes that were least frequently cited by the students. Those themes included wanting to harm another person (their partner, rival, or a stranger), getting resources (such as a job, money, drugs, or gifts), enhancing social status, using sex as a means to a seemingly unrelated end (such as relieving a headache), or having sex out of duty or pressure. |
Those of you who know me, or have been reading for a while, know that I collect euphemisms for “s/he died” from the obituaries.
Today’s N&O obits has a great one, in Dr. Malcom, who was a professor at NC State until 2004 as a Faculty of Civil Engineering teaching Water Resources, Hydrology, Hydraulics and Urban Storm Water Design and Management. His obituary starts…
| Herbert Rooney Malcom, Jr. was called to Heaven Saturday, September 1, 2007, possibly for storm water consultation. |
You’ve got to love that.
I’m trying to get a little bit ahead on my homework readings for this week, so re-read through the discussion board for tonight’s Rhetoric of Science and Technology class, and read through half of Jason’s research work in anticipation of answering questions due for tomorrow night’s Verbal Data Analysis class.
Mid-afternoon, I ran to the grocery store, and upon return picked grapes off their vine stems and washed them, cut up a bunch of celery with which to make some chow mein later this week, and fried up some ground turkey, also with which to make chow mein.
I also made a call to get my two prescriptions refilled, one of which I will run out of before the process of getting its 90-day supply through the mail with merckmedco can complete. An “emergency” (30-day) prescription was called into the K-Mart by my house.
I handled a flurry of STC e-mail and tasks today, mostly centered around the two Faculty Meet & Greets we’re going to be putting on—one next week and one the first week in October.
Class went well tonight. Anna was the summarizer and took it as far as not only summarizing the discussion board comments, but leading the entire discussion throughout class tonight. It was well done—as it should be for a PhD student. That aside, she’s good people.
For the second time, someone (Sandy) referenced one of my postings on the discussion board. I take this as an affirmation.
Back home, while I fixed us an omelet for dinner, Robert was a dear and emptied my trash around the house, and wheeled both my trash can and recycle bin around to the front of the house, as well as adding my paper recycle pile to the cans and plastic.
Also, he brought over a killer, killer banana bread that he’d made. Yum, yum, yum!
Dancing was fun tonight—we had a full house. Carl reviewed Cool Whip for the dance lesson, and I believe I’ve pretty much got it down now—it’s not yet rote, but I can get through it without messing up too much if I continue to concentrate throughout. Of course the bourbons and diet don’t help with that.