Rob Sica

Sexual regret Men were 2.7 times as likely as women to regret the last time they passed up casual sex (43% vs. 16%, d = 0.64, N = 15,182). Women were twice as likely as men to regret the last time they had casual sex (46% vs. 23%, d = 0.58, N = 13,814). labs.la.utexas.edu/buss/file…

“Men are from Mars, women are from Venus” is such a tired caricature of evolutionary psychology. We expect men and women to be similar where our ancestors faced similar adaptive challenges, and to differ where those challenges diverged (Buss, 1995). And that’s precisely what research shows. Across 106 meta-analyses, 85% of the psychological sex differences examined were small or very small (Zell et al., 2015). So where would we expect a sizable difference? One domain is the desire for sexual variety. Additional sexual partners could increase an ancestral man’s reproductive success far more than an ancestral woman’s. That’s why Sexual Strategies Theory predicts that men, on average, will have a stronger desire for additional partners (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). This is one of the most reliable sex differences in mating psychology. For instance, @PsychoSchmitt Schmitt (2005) found that men were more open to sex without commitment in all 48 countries studied (N = 14,059, overall d = .74). In an independent survey of over 200,000 people across 53 countries, Lippa (2009) found the same difference in attitudes toward casual sex (mean d = .74). Take this recent meta-analysis of 211 studies and 621,463 people. Men reported a higher sex drive overall (g = .69), measured by how often they thought or fantasized about sex, felt sexual desire, and masturbated (Frankenbach et al., 2022). Some scholars emphasize the much smaller difference in desire for one’s own partner (g = .27) to play down sex differences in sexual desire. This is misleading. Men reported much stronger sexual desire on first seeing someone attractive (g = .67). The difference was larger still in how often men and women thought or fantasized about sex with someone other than their partner (g = .82). In other words, the gap is largest precisely where evolutionary psychologists expect it. Furthermore, even small differences can add up. Del Giudice and colleagues (2012) found that across 15 personality traits, men and women differed by only about a quarter of a standard deviation per trait on average. Yet when they examined those same traits together, accounting for their correlations, the difference between the average male and female personality profiles was large (Mahalanobis’ D = 1.49).