Original articles
What Distinguishes Women with Unusually High Numbers of Sex Partners?

https://doi.org/10.1016/S1090-5138(98)00045-2Get rights and content

Abstract

We recruited two groups of women who differed in their number of lifetime sex partners in order to investigate several hypotheses related to female sociosexuality. Specifically, we explored whether women who engage in casual sex have low mate value, are especially likely to have come from stressful family environments, or are masculine in other respects besides their interest in casual sex. Women with many partners were not lower than other women on direct or indirect indicators of mate value. Nor were they more likely to recall adverse family environments during childhood. On several measures related to masculinity, women with many sex partners were elevated compared with other women.

Section snippets

Sociosexuality and sexual dimorphism

The sex difference in sociosexuality is large by conventional standards, perhaps one standard deviation (Oliver and Hyde 1993). If the sex difference in sociosexuality is an adaptation, as the most widely accepted evolutionary account hypothesizes, what specific developmental processes may be involved? The most influential general theory of innate sex differences is that early, probably prenatal, androgens organize males' brains differently than females' brains. This theory has been

The present study

The present study is an attempt to replicate and extend prior findings on female sociosexual variation. We recruited two subsamples of noncollege women who differed considerably in their sociosexual histories. We explored three general questions. First, do women with large numbers of sex partners differ from other women in their real or self-perceived mate value? Second, do women who have many sex partners report more unstable rearing environments compared with other women? Third, are women

Participants

Heterosexual women were recruited using advertisements in a free alternative city newspaper. Two advertisements were used to gather subjects. One advertisement stated that single women, aged 25–35 years were wanted for a research study on female sexuality. The advertisement also stated the desire for women who have had a relatively large number of sex partners. This advertisement was used to recruit women with high numbers of lifetime sex partners (the High group). The other advertisement, used

Results

There were 39 women in this study: 20 women with high numbers of lifetime sex partners (range 25–200) and 19 women with lower numbers (range 0–10). The sample was 65% white, 18% African-American, 8% Asian-American, and 9% other ethnic background. Age ranged from 25 to 35 years (mean 30). The average participant had at least some college education. The two groups did not differ significantly in their ethnic backgrounds, age, or education. Although all participants were single at the time of the

Discussion

In this study, we recruited two groups of women who differed widely in their sociosexual histories and compared them on a variety of measures related to both evolutionary and developmental hypotheses. Strengths of our study include the inclusion of a subgroup of women with extremely high numbers of partners, which should yield much greater statistical power compared with unselected samples of similar size, and the fact that, unlike most other samples, our participants were not undergraduate

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