Humans are funny puppet to study , and none more so than when it comes to sexual urge and the strange rituals and cultural quirks that surround it .
A recent discipline published in theJournal of Sex Researchhas need a look in between the sheets to see whether a honey interest ’s attractiveness is affected by the telephone number of notches on their bedpost , ie . how many sexual partners they have antecedently had .
Through an online study of 188 participants , they shop people ’s desire to get into a human relationship with a solidification of different hypothetical people , each who have had varying amounts of intimate partners ranging from 0 to 60 .
In terms of one - dark sales booth or brief flings , the optimal number was between 2 to 6 , after which it slenderly declined with each additional partner .
With short relationship , the medium willingness score for man was overall slightly higher than women . On top of that , men were slightly more inclined to get involved with a virgin or with someone with a lowly identification number of past sexual cooperator . Nevertheless , these differences between the sexes were too small to make any brave assumption .
When it comes to farseeing - full term relationships , there was even less divergence between the sexuality , with both appearing loath to get ask with someone with a luck of old intimate partners .
The optimal number of intimate spouse for a long relationship was around 2 to 3 . Again , after that , each extra sexual partner step by step decreased their attractiveness .
“ The effect of preceding better half number was very orotund , ” the study concluded . “ Thus , contrary to the idea that male sleeping around is tolerated but female promiscuity is not , both sexes express equal reluctance to get involve with someone with an too extensive sexual chronicle . ”
There are a few thing to take into condition with this study . As the study itself points out , the participants are potential to be from a group thatpsychologists call WEIRD(that is , a radical from a Western , Educated , Individualistic , Rich , and Democratic country ) . So , the findings are fair limited to a specific culture . as , the study did n’t come along to pry into same - sex relationships .
The participant were also recruited through Facebook , so are actively wishing to talk about their sexuality and presumably therefore very opened about sex .