One other case where the numbers may not match: differences in age.
For example imagine a population where everybody lives for 60 years, men always marry at 40 where they have sex once, and women marry at 20 where they also have sex once (assume they always have twins). Women over 20 will have had on average one partner, and men over 20 will have had 0.5.
So, the numbers don’t need to match if you have more pairings where the man is older than the woman than the other way around (which seems to be the case); I expect that to account for some of the difference, though I expect exaggeration and flexible interpretations of what is meant by “sex” to account for a bigger chunk.
In most such studies, women report drastically lower sex partnerships than men (2 to 12 partners, for one study I recall from memory and may be dramatically misremembering so don’t take my numbers too seriously). This study is actually interesting in that the numbers of the lie-detected class of respondents are pretty close.
One other case where the numbers may not match: differences in age.
For example imagine a population where everybody lives for 60 years, men always marry at 40 where they have sex once, and women marry at 20 where they also have sex once (assume they always have twins). Women over 20 will have had on average one partner, and men over 20 will have had 0.5.
So, the numbers don’t need to match if you have more pairings where the man is older than the woman than the other way around (which seems to be the case); I expect that to account for some of the difference, though I expect exaggeration and flexible interpretations of what is meant by “sex” to account for a bigger chunk.
In most such studies, women report drastically lower sex partnerships than men (2 to 12 partners, for one study I recall from memory and may be dramatically misremembering so don’t take my numbers too seriously). This study is actually interesting in that the numbers of the lie-detected class of respondents are pretty close.