To prove that the idea of porn stars being "damaged goods" who are incapable of actually enjoying sex is nothing more than a myth, Justin J. Lehmiller, a social psychologist who focuses on sex and relationships, put together some data from two surveys of porn actors and actresses that shows quite the opposite is true.

The data used by Dr. Lehmiller comes from two separate studies: one that surveyed women from 2013, and another that surveyed men from the same year. According to responses from those two studies, when asked to rate how much they enjoy sex on a scale on one (not at all) to 10 (very much), 69 percent of the 177 porn actresses surveyed selected 10, and fewer than 2 percent selected five or less. As Dr. Lehmiller points out, this directly contradicts the idea that porn stars can't enjoy sex because they have so much of it at work. The figure is very similar for the 105 porn actors, who averaged about an 8.4 on the one to 10 sex-enjoyment scale.

So while every single orgasm may not be totally real, the odds that the actors and actresses you're seeing gyrate on screen are actually enjoying what they're doing are fairly high, at least according to these surveys.

Some of the other data cited by Dr. Lehmiller is equally compelling. The average age the men and women surveyed reported losing their virginity was about 15, which isn't far off from the national average of 16 or 17. There are also some interesting differences between men and women in porn when it comes to the number of sexual partners they've had and expect from a love interest. Women in porn report an average of 75 off-screen partners in their lifetimes and say the average number of partners a potential romantic partner should ideally have is about 22. But for men, those numbers are much different, with porn actors reporting an average of 170 off-screen partners, and saying the number of partners a potential love interest has had should be about 13.

To see the rest of the data comparison by Dr. Lehmiller, you can head to his website where he's got all these numbers put together in some pretty infographics.

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Hannah Smothers Hannah writes about health, sex, and relationships for Cosmopolitan, and you can follow her on Twitter and Instagram

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