One thing that stands out in both sets of findings is a consistent sex difference: women are more likely to report having had only one partner, whereas men are more likely to report having had 10 or more partners. Why is this the case? One possibility is that perhaps men and women define “sex” or “sexual partner” in very different ways and are therefore counting very different things. An alternative possibility is that men feel social pressure to over-report and women feel pressure to underreport—in other words, social pressure may lead people to be less than truthful. As some support for this idea, research has found that when men and women are asked about their sexual histories while hooked up to a supposed lie-detector device, the difference between the sexes becomes much smaller [3].

In short, although the statistics above may represent the best available information we have on number of sexual partners, the reality is that the difference between the sexes may not be quite as big as it first appears.

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[1] Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J., Michael, R., & Michaels, S. (1994). The social organization of sexuality: Sexual practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[2] Chandra, A., Mosher, W. D., & Copen, C. (2011). Sexual behavior, sexual attraction, and sexual identity in the United States: Data from the 2006-2008 National Survey of Family Growth. National Health Statistics Reports, 36, 1-36.

[3] Alexander, M.G., & Fisher, T.D. (2003). Truth and consequences: Using the bogus pipeline to examine sex differences in self-reported sexuality. Journal of Sex Research, 40, 27-35.

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