"horny people who have more sex with more people are easier to crank up"

Sure, I'll accept that. But is there something to be said --that is: does this really exist?-- for people who more easily communicate with the "sexual language"? Those who more freely & fluently express and understand a wider palette of subtle interpersonal cues that communicate sexual interest(s), ability to be respectful, conscientiousness, and pleasure-skill level?

Or is that just saying the same thing in slightly more flowery language?

We might not have known it scientifically. It is interesting that the horniness issue relates more to a threshold of what's sexy than any sort of responsiveness degree.

What they need to do is come up with this sort of survey for dating sites and then match people up based on their sexual compatibility. Top quartile of men with top quartile of women. There will probably still be an imbalance in libido, but it might close the libido gap, if you will. No more asexuals paired with high-libido individuals. More likelihood of people open to non-monogamy pairing up. And most importantly, maybe more practical honesty about sex drive between mismatched partners. It's science!

Does the study specify whether participants were asked about their recent sexual history before or after they were shown the images? I'm concerned about the well-documented effect of "priming." That is, if participants were primed to recount how they had a large number of recent partners, they might be more receptive to sexual imagery. They could control for this by reproducing the study where participants are shown the images first.

Was this really gender-neutral? I can believe that hornier/easily aroused women get laid more. For a man, I don't necessarily see the correlation. In fact, I would almost think the opposite would be true - i.e., the more relaxed and less desperately horny-seeming the guy, the better chance he's got. Anyone else feel me on this?

Hm. "Feel me." Maybe I'm one of those horny people.

I think the takeaway isn't that "horny people are hornier than less horny people," but that they have sex with more partners. Not a particularly revolutionary finding, but raises questions about horny people who might be satisfied with a monogamous relationship, if they're happy paired with other horny people, etc.

it could be that people define differently what it means to have had a sexual partner. Perhaps a "horny" person may believe/say that he or she had a sexual partner by, for example getting to 2nd base while his or her partner may have considered that a very bad date with a grabby creep. or perhaps "horny" people are just prone to imagining or lying about having had a sexual experience (anyone remember the high school locker room?).

@6 - what I said. I totally agree with you. The researchers are probably thinking: not our department - that's applied science.

Yes, in your ideal world people CAN have many partners, minimize risk, etc. Then there's the real world, where this is far less common. I'm quite sure you know this.

@6 has it. Dan's takeaway is the experiment method, not the result.

This is interesting though because the christian right likes to lump everyone into the same category of horniness. The whole "well I keep my urges in check" spiel they give kids in 10th grade for abstinence. Not everyone has the same level of urges is a good thing to come out of this. Some people get the urge to fuck alot more than others.

@5: I think the issue is that while some of them would be desperate, they would be looking for sex more, whereas those of us with lower responses wouldn't necessarily be looking for hookups in the same way. In other words, the more responsive you are to sexual imagery, the more important it is to you to have sex.

@5,

I don't know if sexual desperation is necessarily the same thing as horniness. Doesn't Dan advocate that men should masturbate before they go on a date? (Someone advocates for this, maybe it's not him.) I could see a more sexually flexible guy being cool with that advice while a sexually desperate/frustrated/uptight one wouldn't. I guess I'm also thinking of the way gay men, on average, have a wider repertoire of what they consider sex. Overweening sexual desperation is not something I associate with gay men, but then I'm not a gay man so I don't exactly have field experience.

@3 @8 Your application sounds a lot more practical than the one floated in the press release:

Understanding how the brain responds to sexual images could help scientists create a brain stimulation intervention to reduce sensitivity to sexual reward and thus reduce some people's proclivity to engage in risky sexual activities.

http://tinyurl.com/k883x2p

Well lets see. We can either create some sci fi brain alteration machine to make people not want to have sex in order to reduce their risky sexual activities.

Or we can do something really radical like actually provide real sex education, and provide free condoms, and free vaccinations for the sexually transmitted dieses that can be vaccinated for, and do real world things that don't kill peoples' sex drives but rather modify their sexual behaviors and understanding to make what they are doing safer.

But in this country we will try the Dr. Frankenstein brain altering machine first, because why teach people how to be responsible and safe when we can just get rid of those pesky, unchristian like urges in the first place?

It smells to me like they were testing some other hypothesis, didn't get positive results, but dug this correlation out of the data to have something to publish.

Hornier people could have more partners because their eye wanders more. Or because they are dissatisfied with the sex in their relationship. Or because those urges motivate them to hit on more people.

If hornier people = more partners was the hypothesis being tested, then additional questions to tease out why should have been part of the survey.

I agree with Dan and not with @9 about sexual frequency and sexual risk-taking. From studies of contraceptive use, we know that people who have sex frequently are actually much better users of contraception. They anticipate having sex, so they have condoms on hand, and/or are already on a long-term method. Meanwhile, those who anticipate abstaining are unprepared when they then decide not to actually abstain in the moment.

Having more partners is an independent risk factor for STD acquisition, but being unprepared with just one partner one time is another form of risk that bears mitigating.

Wish you'd stop talking bout sex all the time Dan/ just keeps reminding me, I ain't getting any.

Yes but now we know that no one was imagining it. Surely someone has said, "I am just as desirous as you. I'm just more disciplined!"

Late to the party but dan's comment on risk mitigation is right on. I know a dude who does JO with a few guys at circle jerks a couple of times a month, multiplied out by a few decades -- he looks 40 but I'm guessing he's closer to 55 so if you do the math, he's at several thousand partners at least.

He claims never to have gotten so much crabs. While JO is risky for several STIs, it's near zero risk for HIV and that's what most researchers are interested in when they study sexual risk taking.

I also know guys who never have casual sex at all and you can count their partners on one hand -- but they don't use condoms if they "trust" a boyfriend.

I think it is an important finding because there is a popular opinion out there that people who have sex with a lot of partners are all sad pathetic individuals trying to escape some inner demons or "looking for love in all the wrong places". The study shows that no, people have a lot of partners because they like sex.