Men Or Women? Study Settles Debate On Who Has Stronger Sex Drive

Do sexual desire levels in people vary based on their gender? Researchers say men actually show a stronger interest in sex than women.

A new study, published in the journal Psychological Bulletin, has found that men spend more time thinking about sex, fantasizing about it, feeling sexual desire and masturbating.

"What did surprise us was that the finding was consistent across countries, age groups, ethnicities, or sexual orientations. Men having a higher sex drive than women seems to be a quite universal psychological pattern," said study author Julius Frankenbach, Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany.

The study author did admit that "Sexuality is a sensitive topic. So, we also considered the possibility that people's self-reports are not fully accurate. There was some evidence for such inaccurate responses in our data."

To illustrate his point, Frankenbach gave the example of how men reported having more sexual partners than women "which, by simple logic, is almost impossible."

The researcher, however, noted that the response bias was relatively small and could not account for all the gender differences in sex drive they observed.

"In other words, we think that the gender difference is real," Frankenbach said, MedicalXpress reported.

For the study, the researchers reviewed 211 previous studies, all published after 1996. More than 621,000 participants, above 14 years, were involved in the study.

The team attributed the differences in sex drive to standard differences in male and female bodies, with "the gender difference in sex drive roughly equal to the gender difference in body weight."

This doesn't mean women have lower libido. Between 24% and 29% of women had a higher sex drive than the "average" man. "There are plenty of women who are more into sex than many men," Frankenbach added.

It makes one wonder what factors contribute to sex drive. Frankenbach suggested it is a mixed bag of social norms, roles, genetics, physiology and biology.

"Culture certainly plays a strong role in shaping not only how men and women express their sexuality. It also shapes how the sexes feel about what kind of behaviors are appropriate," said Carole Hooven, a lecturer with the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. "We have so much research now, across time and place, that converges on the same observation: Men are more motivated by sex than women."

However, one need not have to read too much into these results.

"Some women clearly enjoy it, and none of this scientific stuff has any bearing on what kinds of behaviors are right or wrong," Hooven added.