BALTIMORE, June 3 (UPI) -- A study in young adults indicates those who have higher levels of empathy also have higher levels of sexual pleasure, U.S. researchers suggest.

Study co-authors Freya Sonenstein, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and director of the Center for Adolescent Health, and Adena Galinsky a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, say the study involved examining data on 3,237 young adults ages 18-26 from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health from 2001 to 2002.


"Sexual health is more than the absence of sexually transmitted infection, unintended pregnancy, violence or other problems," Galinsky says in a statement. "It is the presence of sexual well-being."

The study, published in The Journal of Adolescent Health, finds among the variations in levels of empathy among men, the men who had higher levels of empathy reported higher levels of sexual pleasure.

Among the young women, measures of self-esteem, autonomy and empathy were positively associated with sexual pleasure, the researchers say.