As you can see above, men indeed thought about sex more often than women; however, men thought about all of their needs more than women. So, sex was not unique in that regard—rather, it appears that men just spend more time thinking about all of their needs. However, it is not at all clear from these findings whether men are biologically compelled to think more about their needs, or if there are psycho-social reasons for this sex difference.

Additionally, these results tell us that men certainly aren’t thinking about sex every seven seconds; rather, guys have sex on the brain more like twice per hour on average. Also, contrary to the idea that women rarely think about sex, it seems that women are thinking about sex about once per hour on average. Although these results suggest that men think about sex twice as often as women, this gender difference may be exaggerated due to social pressure on women to underreport their sexual thoughts. Consistent with this idea, among female participants (but not male participants), those who had the least favorable attitudes toward sex and those who were the most concerned about presenting themselves in a favorable light reported the fewest sexual thoughts. This suggests that some women were not accurately reporting how often they were actually thinking about sex.

All in all, these findings challenge the common stereotype of the hypersexual man and the hyposexual woman. The reality is that both men and women think about sex several times per day. Also, while men do seem to think about sex more often, it is far from being the only thing that they have on the brain.

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[1] Fisher, T. D., Moore, Z. T., & Pittenger, M. (2012). Sex on the brain?: An examination of frequency of sexual cognitions as a function of gender, erotophilia, and social desirability. The Journal of Sex Research, 49, 69-77.

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