Field of Science

Wealthy men's women have more orgasms

ResearchBlogging.orgIf your man is rich you'll have a higher frequency of orgasms. At least if you're Chinese (not including Tibet and Hong Kong). Why is this interesting at all, except that it's about sex, which human find interesting in a of itself? Well, because we have no idea why women have orgasms in the first place. It pretty clear why, and notably when, men have orgasms, but no one really knows why women have them.

Male income and height are were included to measure male quality, because both parameters have previously been found to affect male reproductive success. Rich men are sexy. Tall men are sexy. But does male sexiness translate into more female orgasms?

The hypothesis about female orgasms that Pollet and Nettle investigate is this one.
If female orgasm is adaptively designed for discriminating male quality, then it should be more frequent in females paired with high-quality males.
And since male quality is wealth and height, their prediction is clear.
If the adaptive view of female orgasm is correct, then we predict that women will report more frequent orgasms the richer their partners are and the taller their partners are.
The 1534 women in the study self-reported via computers away from the their homes, so if you think you can trust self-reporting (which is always an issue), you may agree with the authors that women have more orgasms the higher their partner's income is. But does this explain why women have orgasms at all?



They end the paper thus.
The data produced so far, while apparently consistent with an adaptive role for female orgasm, are far from definitive. Moreover, even if consistent with an adaptive role for female orgasm, these data do not allow conclusive testing between two alternative proposed functions—namely, that female orgasm differentially promotes emotional bonding with high-quality males or that it differentially promotes conception with such males under conditions of sperm competition.
More research is need to elucidate the function of the female orgasm. Anyone disagree with that?

Additionally, there was a slight trend that partner height influence orgasm frequency the same way that wealth does. The probability that this was a random effect was 0.5<p<0.1, meaning that it didn't quite make below the magical P-value of 5%. We definitely need more data on that.

Reference:
T POLLET, D NETTLE (2009). Partner wealth predicts self-reported orgasm frequency in a sample of Chinese women Evolution and Human Behavior DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2008.11.002

13 comments:

  1. First of all, PLEASE arrange for an email-notification plugin for this blog, I write a comment here and totally forget about it for weeks.

    Second, this study would have been a lot more interesting if it wasn't such a statement of the obvious: this fits evolutionary psychological paradigms perfectly: greater fitness allows for greater spouse satisfaction allows for enhanced sexual urge and pleasure derived from it. It's practically a cliche. It's like saying "women like well-built rich men",.

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  2. I think it says as much about the males as the females. Let's presume "women like tall rich men." Is it equally true that "well-built rich men are more capable lovers"? Can we describe a mathematical relationship between the attractiveness of the man in the eyes of his spouse and his intimate skills? Not to mention motivation to develop and use them!

    Perhaps these are linked traits in males. Tall, rich men who also excel in giving orgasms to their female partners might be more likely to keep their women over the long term, which in turn increases the likelihood of the couple's children being raised in a stable and happy environment. Which would in turn increase the children's prospects for survival and future breeding.

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  3. I would like to see the study where women change their parter (divorce or death of the male) and with that change the income of the partner changes, and thus the frequency of O...

    That would be the correct controle I suppose,

    Cheers

    ReplyDelete
  4. Too many variables are unaccounted for. Female (and male) education level, the frequency of the sex, the use of vibrators, the use of manual stimulation, female body type, and male symmetry, to name a few.

    Consider me unconvinced.

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  5. Freidenker, I believe the link 'subscribe by email' below the textarea to the right will subscribe you to the current thread.

    Here's what they have to say about control variables:

    Our control variables were the following: age (years, continuous); duration of current relationship (years, continuous); self-rated health (five categories); self-rated happiness (four categories); education (six categories); difference in income between partner and self (yuan, continuous); and difference in education between partner and self (based on the six education categories, continuous). In addition, it is
    possible that orgasm frequency, along with other sexual behavior variables, is influenced by degree of westernization.

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  6. Totally unbelievable. Please.

    As a female, I can tell you that whether or not I have an orgasms is far more dependent on the mood I'm in at the time than anything done by the male.

    Oh, and rich men arn't "sexy". Under some circumstances, rich men may be more able to get people to have sex with them. This isn't the same as being sexy.

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  7. Waitwait. "Able to get people to to have sex with you" and "sexy" may not be identical, but they are undeniably similar! Yah, and d'you think maybe women who are married to rich tall guys tend to be in a better mood more often than those married to poor short guys? So maybe you or I may have anecdotal evidence that doesn't match with the trends indicated by the study. That doesn't mean it's a bad study, just that it indicates statistical tendency and not universal determinacy.

    I think considering the complexity of the topic, the researchers did a good job controlling for as many variables as they could. It's tough to get accurate data on female orgasms! The only thing I can think of that would be truly reliable is if they had a study where women volunteered to have little electronic measuring devices implanted in their abdomens over the course of months or years. Which would be expensive as hell, and it'd be hard finding volunteer participants who'd represent a significant sample size.

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  8. Fiat Lex, I would second your objections to the female above. Anecdotal evidence really has nothing going for it. Not just because anyone may be an outlier, but also because no one can really be relied upon to know themselves well enough to say what drives them. That we aren't really in control of ourselves to the extent that we often think we are is one of the most profound findings of psychology and neuroscience.

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  9. The problem with this kind of research is the wide variety of possible explanations for the purported correlation.

    In the UK, newspapers aimed at a female readership described this study in terms of female choice, while newspapers aimed at a male readership described it in terms of male prowess. But a third explanation ignored by both sets of newspapers was the possibility that this could also be the result of male choice - rich men choosing randy girlfriends. See my blog on female pleasure.

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  10. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    ReplyDelete
  12. Unfortunately I cannot provide any more details. I am not rich, and I don't have your email address.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi
    Very nice and intrestingss story.

    ReplyDelete

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