You apparently assume that if women are to form multiple attachments, there will be more attachment opportunities for all men, not just those in the upper tiers of attractiveness. Yet in reality, we see some contrary evidence, in that when women become more promiscuous, the additional amount of sex taking place is not at all distributed randomly or equally across all categories of men; instead, those in the upper tiers of attractiveness get the overwhelming part of it. (I know that this is not equivalent to what you have in mind, but I do think that there is enough similarity to provide at least some relevant evidence.)
This does seem to be the case. F. Roger Devlin makes a rather bold statement of this argument in this essay (though I dislike his conservative political slant and certain biased terms; also, ignore his criticism of feminist discourse on sexual violence, because it is massively lower quality that everything else he writes and riddled with errors):
Once monogamy is abolished, no restriction is placed on a woman’s choices. Hence, all women choose the same few men. If Casanova had 132 lovers it is because 132 different women chose him. Such men acquire harems, not because they are predators, but because they happen to be attractive. The problem is not so much male immorality as simple arithmetic; it is obviously impossible for every woman to have exclusive possession of the most attractive man. If women want to mate simply as their natural drives impel them, they must, rationally speaking, be willing to share their mate with others.
But, of course, women’s attitude about this situation is not especially rational. They expect their alpha man to “commit.” Woman’s complaining about men’s failure to commit, one suspects, means merely that they are unable to get a highly attractive man to commit to them; rather as if an ordinary man were to propose to Helen of Troy and complain of her refusal by saying “women don’t want to get married.”
F. Roger Devlin makes a rather bold statement of this argument in this essay (though I dislike his conservative political slant and certain biased terms; also, ignore his criticism of feminist discourse on sexual violence, because it is massively lower quality that everything else he writes and riddled with errors):
Yes, I read that essay a while ago. Trouble is, Devlin’s writing is of the sort I find most frustrating: it delivers some excellent insight wrapped up in an awful presentation, both because of Devlin’s own exaggerations and the disreputable publication venue. Unfortunately, not many people will be willing to look past these negative signals and make the effort to understand his very solid main arguments. A better presentation of his thesis could have reached a much broader audience, and made for a much better reference in discussions of this sort.
Yeah, I agree. I’m currently looking for some better references on hypergamy. I already have a bunch of refs on greater female selectivity, but I’m finding mixed results on hypergamy because of so many different operationalizations of status.
Casanova may have had 132 lovers, but most or all of them weren’t long-term relationships. There’s an upper-limit to the number of serious romantic relationships one person can maintain at one time, and it’s certainly less than ten and probably closer to five (the highest I’ve heard of is four). Furthermore, I’ve pointed out elsewhere that historically, harems are not devised by women.
If women and men maintain approximately equal numbers of relationships (which they seem to, in the poly community), then the most attractive partners available to you will be at least as attractive as they would have been if everyone were monogamous. It’s a matter of math.
I think you’re a little too confident of the argument you’ve been making throughout the comments on this post. There are no economically well-developed modern societies with a social norm other than monogamy, and there are some indications that ubiquitous birth control is a game-changer, so historical evidence may not apply. We’re all arguing without large-scale evidence. We can (and should) speculate about what alternative social norms would entail, and we can justify those speculations to lesser or greater degrees. But there is no certainty in this debate.
There are no economically well-developed modern societies with a social norm other than monogamy, and there are some indications that ubiquitous birth control is a game-changer, so historical evidence may not apply. We’re all arguing without large-scale evidence.
That’s not really true. In large parts of many rich contemporary societies, monogamous norms have been weakened to the point where a great many people engage in non-monogamous sexual behaviors. Yes, even among those people, the majority seem to consider stable monogamy as a goal to be achieved at some point in the future, but they nevertheless spend significant parts of their lives engaged in casual serial monogamy and promiscuous sex. (And in some lower class environments, even the pretense of monogamous norms has nearly disappeared.)
There is definitely significant large-scale evidence here about what happens (in at least some cases) when monogamous norms break down in a wealthy society. This evidence points quite unambiguously towards female hypergamy, where a minority of exceptionally attractive men account for the overwhelming part of non-monogamous sexual pairings that take place, and women at all levels of attractiveness strive towards men with higher relative status. You can of course dispute the relevance of this evidence, but you definitely can’t deny its existence.
Some men want to help raise children, including children who aren’t genetically their own. I’m not talking about cuckoldry, but adoption or choosing women who already have children. What proportion of men do you think that is?
I realize you’re talking about sex, not children, but how children are raised is part of the effect of sexual norms.
More generally, what you describe just doesn’t seem like the world I’m living in. Admittedly, the world I’m living in is mostly science fiction fandom, but I just don’t seem to see women turning down almost every man in the search for high status men.
What proportion of men are you seeing as excluded from mating if the default is non-monogamy?
Some men want to help raise children, including children who aren’t genetically their own. I’m not talking about cuckoldry, but adoption or choosing women who already have children. What proportion of men do you think that is?
I would imagine that the proportion of men who prefer to raise children who are not genetically their own is very low. The proportion of men who are willing to raise children that are not their own because circumstances make it difficult or impossible to have their own biological children or because they desire a relationship with a partner who already has children is probably quite a bit higher.
Admittedly, the world I’m living in is mostly science fiction fandom, but I just don’t seem to see women turning down almost every man in the search for high status men.
The stereotype is that the sex ratio in science fiction fandom is heavily skewed in the male direction. Is this stereotype not accurate?
The stereotype is that the sex ratio in science fiction fandom is heavily skewed in the male direction. Is this stereotype not accurate?
Somewhat, though I don’t think the ratio is that extreme. In any case, if there are more men than women, wouldn’t that increase the variation among men (the high status men would be dramatically higher status) so that if competing for high status men is the most important thing, the competition for the superstars would get more intense.
If there are more men than women I would think you would see more selectivity from women and so more instances of women turning down men than vice-versa. Your original comment implied you don’t see lots of men getting turned down which seems surprising with unequal gender ratios.
There are possible explanations but I’d expect to see a pattern of certain men being consistently overlooked while others had consistent success and that this would be even more pronounced than in society as a whole where gender ratios are more equal. If this is not the pattern you observe I’m curious what you do see and what you think the explanation is.
I admit to spending an annoying couple or three hours on a car trip with a woman who couldn’t talk about anything but her assignation with [big name science fiction author], but that’s the only example I’ve got for extreme status chasing.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there are more men in fandom who want sex and can’t get it than women. What I’m disagreeing with is the idea that, given sexual freedom, women will mostly go after the highest status men.
More generally, what you describe just doesn’t seem like the world I’m living in.
Mind you, I wasn’t referring to the whole spectrum of male-female relationships that take place nowadays. Lots of folks still live old-fashioned lives centered around monogamous relationships with the goal of marriage, avoiding promiscuity and (as best they can) serial monogamy. Clearly, under a monogamous regime, people typically end up paired with someone who is roughly in the same league, so the above considerations don’t apply.
However, if we talk specifically about promiscuous behaviors, then the above described hypergamous patterns definitely occur. From the perspective of typical men, or for people unfamiliar with the situation, the options enjoyed here by top-tier men really are nothing like the world they’re living in. After all, there are men whose notch counts are in the four-, perhaps even five-digit territory—whereas on the other side of the spectrum, for very large numbers of men, the increase in promiscuity hasn’t expanded their sexual options at all relative to an absolutely prudish regime. It has possibly even lowered them by reducing their monogamous opportunities.
What proportion of men are you seeing as excluded from mating if the default is non-monogamy?
It’s hard to give any definite numbers, and it obviously depends on the concrete arrangements in practice. It also depends on men’s criteria (some men will be reduced to a choice of women who are in a much lower percentile of attractiveness, so they might find all the available choices unacceptable). But in any case, I would say that under a complete breakdown of all monogamous norms, the percentage of men reduced to virtually zero mating opportunities would be in the double digits.
I think that we’re defining norms in slightly different ways. I have been meaning norms to mean “what people should do” and not just “what people do.” I’ve also been stretching monogamy a little to mean the ideal of having only one partner at a time, whether or not that’s in the context of marriage. It’s a fairly common usage, but still easy to be unclear about.
So I would say that serial monogamy is still monogamy, and that promiscuous sex outside the context of any relationship has little to do with relationship styles at all. Your examples point to a failure to enforce monogamous norms while the norms remain unchanged, I would say.
Or perhaps monogamous norms are weakening, and these examples are the result of particular groups not having any strong relationship norms at all; various kinds of polyamory and swinging offer social norms that can be as strong as monogamous ones, but they’re largely unknown.
Again, it’s hard to say. What evidence there is can be plausibly interpreted in quite a few ways, some of which I’m sure neither of us have thought of.
promiscuous sex outside the context of any relationship has little to do with relationship styles at all.
I’m not sure that’s fair. Couldn’t you say that having multiple friends with benefits is a type of ” relationship style,” in a sense?
monogamous norms are weakening, and these examples are the result of particular groups not having any strong relationship norms at all; various kinds of polyamory and swinging offer social norms that can be as strong as monogamous ones
Again, “take some time between serious relationships to have multiple casual partners” can be a relationship norm, one that appears very common.
You may be assigning too much credence to that news report. It’s really just summarizing an argument between two partisan political parties about marriage’s declining popularity among the poor. The only quantitative data cited is the number of UK marriages in 1972 and the number of UK marriages in 2009, which are not really enough to settle the claims made in the article or your parenthetical.
There is definitely significant large-scale evidence …
Which significant large-scale evidence do you have in mind? The lack of citations suggests that you think it’s very obvious, but I can’t think of it. I may well be missing something obvious, but without a cite I don’t know.
You may be assigning too much credence to that news report.
You’re right, this wasn’t a good choice of reference, if anything since the claims were made in an explicitly politicized context. However, whichever statistics you look at, there is no doubt that the decline in monogamous norms in many Western countries (and the Anglosphere nations in particular) has been far more pronounced among the lower classes, and that among significant parts of the underclass, the traditional monogamous norms have weakened to the point of collapse. See e.g. some U.K. data here, or the U.S. data here (which conveniently control for race, so that the trends are strikingly obvious as a class phenomenon).
If you just google for the relevant terms, you’ll get tons of statistics corroborating these basic points from various angles.
Which significant large-scale evidence do you have in mind? The lack of citations suggests that you think it’s very obvious, but I can’t think of it. I may well be missing something obvious, but without a cite I don’t know.
Regarding citations, one problem here is that when it comes to people’s sexual behavior, social science data based on surveys are of dubious value. As a rule, men report having sex with significantly more women on average than vice versa—a logical impossibility assuming the samples are representative. So, either people lie big time about their sexual behavior even in anonymous surveys (which sounds quite plausible to me), or the samples always turn out to be critically unrepresentative. (Here is one attempt at the latter sort of explanation.)
Nevertheless, the existing data suggest pretty convincingly that when it comes to the distribution of the total number of sex partners, men’s distribution has a much wider variance than women’s. See this article (unfortunately not available ungated) for references. This observation is consistent with the scenario where women at all levels of attractiveness strive towards men at higher levels, so that men near the bottom get nothing, while those in the upper tiers are making out like bandits.
However, even regardless of any research data, things should be obvious from common knowledge and everyday observations. There are clearly lots of men around for whom getting into any relationship with a woman would be a Herculean accomplishment, even more of those who struggle with positive but still meager results, and a minority for whom getting laid with attractive women is almost trivial, who easily rack up many dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of notches. (Of course, this is a continuum, not a sharp division.) This is the situation to which the weakening of monogamous norms in recent decades has led, and it surely constitutes evidence of the sort whose existence WrongBot denied in his above comment.
See e.g. some U.K. data here, or the U.S. data here (which conveniently control for race, so that the trends are strikingly obvious as a class phenomenon).
Thanks! I think I misinterpreted your earlier post; when I wrote the grandparent comment, I had read ‘monogamy’ as you referring to faithful long-term one-on-one relationships, not just the subset of those relationships that are marriages. But it sounds like you mean marriage proper, in which case I think you’re right (albeit depending on what scale of ‘environment’ we’re talking about).
However, even regardless of any research data, things should be obvious from common knowledge and everyday observations. There are clearly lots of men around for whom getting into any relationship with a woman would be a Herculean accomplishment, even more of those who struggle with positive but still meager results, and a minority for whom getting laid with attractive women is almost trivial, who easily rack up many dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of notches.
If I’m honest, my own everyday observations and knowledge don’t seem to be strong evidence of all three of: (1) breakdown of monogamous norms, (2) a concurrent increase in female hypergamy ‘where a minority of exceptionally attractive men account for the overwhelming part of non-monogamous sexual pairings that take place’, and (3) a causal relationship between #1 and #2. It doesn’t help that I didn’t even hit adolescence until last decade—I expect I have much less experience of relationship trends over time than you.
It seems plausible to me that men have a much wider variance in heterosexual sex partners than women, but I’m not sure it’s definitively confirmed—or that the variance ratio has increased over the last few decades because of a decline in monogamous norms. The PNAS article suggests that a failure to account for prostitutes in sex surveys can explain the male-female difference in mean number of sexual partners, which hints that it might also explain the male-female difference in variance, too. (After all, excluding female prostitutes from a survey is a little like chopping the right tail off the female sex partner distribution, which would decrease its variance.) The other review article doesn’t seem to suggest a clear trend in the male-female variance ratio over time, either, although it looks like there is (surprisingly—at least to me) little high-quality data for judging that.
For anyone else curious about the published paper, it’s freely available. Annoyingly, it doesn’t seem to say the standard deviation of number of sex partners for women under each condition, only averages, so it’s hard to do an independent statistical check. The authors did do their own test:
Number of sexual partners. The two-way ANOVA on self-reports of the number of sexual partners yielded no significant effects, F < 1, but the data did strongly favor the predicted pattern (see Figure 2). That is, men reported more sexual partners than did women in the exposure threat condition (3.7 vs. 2.6, η² = .03), where gender expectations are most salient. The magnitude of the sex difference decreased in the anonymity condition (4.2 vs. 3.4, η² = .01), and the direction of the difference actually reversed in the bogus pipeline condition, with men reporting fewer partners than women (4.0 vs. 4.4, η² = .001).
The ‘bogus pipeline condition’ is one where the women were hooked up to a (not working) lie detector.
A much smaller one, which may well be within statistical bounds. Good point about people knowing that lie detectors don’t work. That may account for any remaining difference.
Apparently, there was no experiment with the men hooked up to a (bogus) lie detector, and I think there should have been.
Sure there was:
Men who thought they were attached to a polygraph reported an average of 4.0 sexual partners, compared to 3.7 partners for those who thought their answers might be seen.
Thanks—goes to show I should have read the linked material.
I’m surprised. I’d have expected that men would lie about having more partners rather than fewer, but that might be mere stereotyping on my part.
The other possibility I can think of is that people who think they’re hooked to a lie detector don’t just say what they immediately think is true, they check their memories more carefully.
This does seem to be the case. F. Roger Devlin makes a rather bold statement of this argument in this essay (though I dislike his conservative political slant and certain biased terms; also, ignore his criticism of feminist discourse on sexual violence, because it is massively lower quality that everything else he writes and riddled with errors):
HughRistik:
Yes, I read that essay a while ago. Trouble is, Devlin’s writing is of the sort I find most frustrating: it delivers some excellent insight wrapped up in an awful presentation, both because of Devlin’s own exaggerations and the disreputable publication venue. Unfortunately, not many people will be willing to look past these negative signals and make the effort to understand his very solid main arguments. A better presentation of his thesis could have reached a much broader audience, and made for a much better reference in discussions of this sort.
Yeah, I agree. I’m currently looking for some better references on hypergamy. I already have a bunch of refs on greater female selectivity, but I’m finding mixed results on hypergamy because of so many different operationalizations of status.
Casanova may have had 132 lovers, but most or all of them weren’t long-term relationships. There’s an upper-limit to the number of serious romantic relationships one person can maintain at one time, and it’s certainly less than ten and probably closer to five (the highest I’ve heard of is four). Furthermore, I’ve pointed out elsewhere that historically, harems are not devised by women.
If women and men maintain approximately equal numbers of relationships (which they seem to, in the poly community), then the most attractive partners available to you will be at least as attractive as they would have been if everyone were monogamous. It’s a matter of math.
I think you’re a little too confident of the argument you’ve been making throughout the comments on this post. There are no economically well-developed modern societies with a social norm other than monogamy, and there are some indications that ubiquitous birth control is a game-changer, so historical evidence may not apply. We’re all arguing without large-scale evidence. We can (and should) speculate about what alternative social norms would entail, and we can justify those speculations to lesser or greater degrees. But there is no certainty in this debate.
WrongBot:
That’s not really true. In large parts of many rich contemporary societies, monogamous norms have been weakened to the point where a great many people engage in non-monogamous sexual behaviors. Yes, even among those people, the majority seem to consider stable monogamy as a goal to be achieved at some point in the future, but they nevertheless spend significant parts of their lives engaged in casual serial monogamy and promiscuous sex. (And in some lower class environments, even the pretense of monogamous norms has nearly disappeared.)
There is definitely significant large-scale evidence here about what happens (in at least some cases) when monogamous norms break down in a wealthy society. This evidence points quite unambiguously towards female hypergamy, where a minority of exceptionally attractive men account for the overwhelming part of non-monogamous sexual pairings that take place, and women at all levels of attractiveness strive towards men with higher relative status. You can of course dispute the relevance of this evidence, but you definitely can’t deny its existence.
Some men want to help raise children, including children who aren’t genetically their own. I’m not talking about cuckoldry, but adoption or choosing women who already have children. What proportion of men do you think that is?
I realize you’re talking about sex, not children, but how children are raised is part of the effect of sexual norms.
More generally, what you describe just doesn’t seem like the world I’m living in. Admittedly, the world I’m living in is mostly science fiction fandom, but I just don’t seem to see women turning down almost every man in the search for high status men.
What proportion of men are you seeing as excluded from mating if the default is non-monogamy?
I would imagine that the proportion of men who prefer to raise children who are not genetically their own is very low. The proportion of men who are willing to raise children that are not their own because circumstances make it difficult or impossible to have their own biological children or because they desire a relationship with a partner who already has children is probably quite a bit higher.
The stereotype is that the sex ratio in science fiction fandom is heavily skewed in the male direction. Is this stereotype not accurate?
Somewhat, though I don’t think the ratio is that extreme. In any case, if there are more men than women, wouldn’t that increase the variation among men (the high status men would be dramatically higher status) so that if competing for high status men is the most important thing, the competition for the superstars would get more intense.
If there are more men than women I would think you would see more selectivity from women and so more instances of women turning down men than vice-versa. Your original comment implied you don’t see lots of men getting turned down which seems surprising with unequal gender ratios.
There are possible explanations but I’d expect to see a pattern of certain men being consistently overlooked while others had consistent success and that this would be even more pronounced than in society as a whole where gender ratios are more equal. If this is not the pattern you observe I’m curious what you do see and what you think the explanation is.
I see a lot of pretty stable couples.
I admit to spending an annoying couple or three hours on a car trip with a woman who couldn’t talk about anything but her assignation with [big name science fiction author], but that’s the only example I’ve got for extreme status chasing.
It wouldn’t surprise me if there are more men in fandom who want sex and can’t get it than women. What I’m disagreeing with is the idea that, given sexual freedom, women will mostly go after the highest status men.
NancyLebovitz:
Mind you, I wasn’t referring to the whole spectrum of male-female relationships that take place nowadays. Lots of folks still live old-fashioned lives centered around monogamous relationships with the goal of marriage, avoiding promiscuity and (as best they can) serial monogamy. Clearly, under a monogamous regime, people typically end up paired with someone who is roughly in the same league, so the above considerations don’t apply.
However, if we talk specifically about promiscuous behaviors, then the above described hypergamous patterns definitely occur. From the perspective of typical men, or for people unfamiliar with the situation, the options enjoyed here by top-tier men really are nothing like the world they’re living in. After all, there are men whose notch counts are in the four-, perhaps even five-digit territory—whereas on the other side of the spectrum, for very large numbers of men, the increase in promiscuity hasn’t expanded their sexual options at all relative to an absolutely prudish regime. It has possibly even lowered them by reducing their monogamous opportunities.
It’s hard to give any definite numbers, and it obviously depends on the concrete arrangements in practice. It also depends on men’s criteria (some men will be reduced to a choice of women who are in a much lower percentile of attractiveness, so they might find all the available choices unacceptable). But in any case, I would say that under a complete breakdown of all monogamous norms, the percentage of men reduced to virtually zero mating opportunities would be in the double digits.
I think that we’re defining norms in slightly different ways. I have been meaning norms to mean “what people should do” and not just “what people do.” I’ve also been stretching monogamy a little to mean the ideal of having only one partner at a time, whether or not that’s in the context of marriage. It’s a fairly common usage, but still easy to be unclear about.
So I would say that serial monogamy is still monogamy, and that promiscuous sex outside the context of any relationship has little to do with relationship styles at all. Your examples point to a failure to enforce monogamous norms while the norms remain unchanged, I would say.
Or perhaps monogamous norms are weakening, and these examples are the result of particular groups not having any strong relationship norms at all; various kinds of polyamory and swinging offer social norms that can be as strong as monogamous ones, but they’re largely unknown.
Again, it’s hard to say. What evidence there is can be plausibly interpreted in quite a few ways, some of which I’m sure neither of us have thought of.
I’m not sure that’s fair. Couldn’t you say that having multiple friends with benefits is a type of ” relationship style,” in a sense?
Again, “take some time between serious relationships to have multiple casual partners” can be a relationship norm, one that appears very common.
I would calling being friends with benefits a relationship; I was thinking more of relatively-anonymous one night stands.
Likewise, casual partners are still partners; I also think that having multiple casual partners is frowned upon much more than you indicate.
You may be assigning too much credence to that news report. It’s really just summarizing an argument between two partisan political parties about marriage’s declining popularity among the poor. The only quantitative data cited is the number of UK marriages in 1972 and the number of UK marriages in 2009, which are not really enough to settle the claims made in the article or your parenthetical.
Which significant large-scale evidence do you have in mind? The lack of citations suggests that you think it’s very obvious, but I can’t think of it. I may well be missing something obvious, but without a cite I don’t know.
cupholder:
You’re right, this wasn’t a good choice of reference, if anything since the claims were made in an explicitly politicized context. However, whichever statistics you look at, there is no doubt that the decline in monogamous norms in many Western countries (and the Anglosphere nations in particular) has been far more pronounced among the lower classes, and that among significant parts of the underclass, the traditional monogamous norms have weakened to the point of collapse. See e.g. some U.K. data here, or the U.S. data here (which conveniently control for race, so that the trends are strikingly obvious as a class phenomenon).
If you just google for the relevant terms, you’ll get tons of statistics corroborating these basic points from various angles.
Regarding citations, one problem here is that when it comes to people’s sexual behavior, social science data based on surveys are of dubious value. As a rule, men report having sex with significantly more women on average than vice versa—a logical impossibility assuming the samples are representative. So, either people lie big time about their sexual behavior even in anonymous surveys (which sounds quite plausible to me), or the samples always turn out to be critically unrepresentative. (Here is one attempt at the latter sort of explanation.)
Nevertheless, the existing data suggest pretty convincingly that when it comes to the distribution of the total number of sex partners, men’s distribution has a much wider variance than women’s. See this article (unfortunately not available ungated) for references. This observation is consistent with the scenario where women at all levels of attractiveness strive towards men at higher levels, so that men near the bottom get nothing, while those in the upper tiers are making out like bandits.
However, even regardless of any research data, things should be obvious from common knowledge and everyday observations. There are clearly lots of men around for whom getting into any relationship with a woman would be a Herculean accomplishment, even more of those who struggle with positive but still meager results, and a minority for whom getting laid with attractive women is almost trivial, who easily rack up many dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of notches. (Of course, this is a continuum, not a sharp division.) This is the situation to which the weakening of monogamous norms in recent decades has led, and it surely constitutes evidence of the sort whose existence WrongBot denied in his above comment.
Thanks! I think I misinterpreted your earlier post; when I wrote the grandparent comment, I had read ‘monogamy’ as you referring to faithful long-term one-on-one relationships, not just the subset of those relationships that are marriages. But it sounds like you mean marriage proper, in which case I think you’re right (albeit depending on what scale of ‘environment’ we’re talking about).
If I’m honest, my own everyday observations and knowledge don’t seem to be strong evidence of all three of: (1) breakdown of monogamous norms, (2) a concurrent increase in female hypergamy ‘where a minority of exceptionally attractive men account for the overwhelming part of non-monogamous sexual pairings that take place’, and (3) a causal relationship between #1 and #2. It doesn’t help that I didn’t even hit adolescence until last decade—I expect I have much less experience of relationship trends over time than you.
It seems plausible to me that men have a much wider variance in heterosexual sex partners than women, but I’m not sure it’s definitively confirmed—or that the variance ratio has increased over the last few decades because of a decline in monogamous norms. The PNAS article suggests that a failure to account for prostitutes in sex surveys can explain the male-female difference in mean number of sexual partners, which hints that it might also explain the male-female difference in variance, too. (After all, excluding female prostitutes from a survey is a little like chopping the right tail off the female sex partner distribution, which would decrease its variance.) The other review article doesn’t seem to suggest a clear trend in the male-female variance ratio over time, either, although it looks like there is (surprisingly—at least to me) little high-quality data for judging that.
It’s interesting to note that the difference goes away when the women are told they’re hooked up to a lie detector.
That’s a cute result!
For anyone else curious about the published paper, it’s freely available. Annoyingly, it doesn’t seem to say the standard deviation of number of sex partners for women under each condition, only averages, so it’s hard to do an independent statistical check. The authors did do their own test:
The ‘bogus pipeline condition’ is one where the women were hooked up to a (not working) lie detector.
However, there’s still a difference.
Apparently, there was no experiment with the men hooked up to a (bogus) lie detector, and I think there should have been.
I also have no idea what proportion of the population is cynical about lie detectors. I don’t even have a strong prior on that one.
A much smaller one, which may well be within statistical bounds. Good point about people knowing that lie detectors don’t work. That may account for any remaining difference.
Sure there was:
Thanks—goes to show I should have read the linked material.
I’m surprised. I’d have expected that men would lie about having more partners rather than fewer, but that might be mere stereotyping on my part.
The other possibility I can think of is that people who think they’re hooked to a lie detector don’t just say what they immediately think is true, they check their memories more carefully.
Or maybe the sample’s not representative of most men—the sample was of Midwestern psychology undergraduate students.