Information about the sex drive study
appearing in the January 2006 issue
of Psychological Science

The complete reference for the article is:

Abstract:

If sex drive is a generalized energizer of sexual behaviors, then high sex drive should increase an individual’s sexual attraction to both men and women.  If sex drive energizes only dominant sexual responses, however, then high sex drive should selectively increase attraction to men or to women, but not to both, depending on the individual’s sexual orientation.  Data from three studies assessing a total of 3645 participants show that for most women, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to both men and women.  For men, however, high sex drive is associated with increased sexual attraction to only one sex or the other, depending on men’s sexual orientation.  These results suggest that the correlates of sex drive and the organization of sexual orientation are different for women and men.

A brief description of the study and some newer, related data:

            The higher women’s sex drive, the more they desire both sexes.  However, the higher men’s sex drive, the more they desire either one sex or the other: High sex drive heterosexual men desire women strongly, but not men, whereas high sex drive gay men desire men strongly, but not women.  These are some of the findings presented in a new study by psychology professor Richard A. Lippa, which was published in the January 2006 issue of Psychological Science.  Other analyses of Lippa’s data showed that heterosexual women are 27 times more likely than heterosexual men to express moderate or more attraction to their own sex.

            For most men, a higher sex drive simply intensifies their existing sexual orientation, Lippa said.  “It’s a common sense view that heterosexual men with high sex drives are very interested in women and gay men with high sex drives are super attracted to men.  The unexpected result of this study is that it suggests that women are more intrinsically bisexual. Men tend to be either-or (heterosexual or gay), but women have more shades of gray.”

            Lippa, author of the 2005 book Gender, Nature, and Nurture and a prominent gender researcher, said that new unpublished data from a recent BBC Internet survey of over 200,000 people shows “there probably is a biological something going on here,” because the results presented in his Psychological Science study replicated across many different world regions and countries, including Western Europe, Latin America, Australia, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Singapore. Lippa observed that “these findings suggest that sexual orientation is fundamentally different in men and women. It almost seems that in most women, there is a latent bisexuality and that high sex drive energizes it.”

            According to Lippa, the new BBC data show that “the results do not vary across cultures or age groups.  Based on these and other data, I’m convinced that you can pretty easily replicate my findings anywhere. They are quite robust.”

            Lippa believes that differences in men’s and women’s sexual orientation may also result from cultural and environmental factors, such as society’s greater tolerance for same-sex attraction and affection in women than in men.

            According to Lippa, his study “helps us understand a little bit about human nature and sex differences.  It shows that in some fundamental ways, sexuality differs in men and women.”

            Lippa served as a research consultant to the BBC Internet survey, which was developed in concert with the BBC 1 documentary Secrets of the Sexes, and Lippa’s new research based on the BBC data will be published in four articles in upcoming editions of the Archives of Sexual Behavior.  In addition, Lippa will serve as a co-editor of special section of the Archives of Sexual Behavior devoted to research based on the BBC survey.

            Richard Lippa is a Professor of Psychology at California State University, Fullerton.  The author of many research articles on gender, masculinity, and femininity, he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow at Stanford University where he received his Ph.D. in Psychology.

Some common questions (and misconceptions) about research on sex drive and attractions to men and women:

Question: Does this research say that all women are bisexual?

Answer: No.  Most heterosexual women report that they are much more attracted to men than to women.  However, unlike heterosexual men, many heterosexual women also express some degree of attraction to other women.  In high-sex-drive heterosexual women, this latent same-sex attraction may be activated.

Question:  Does this research mean that all high-sex-drive women are bisexual.

Answer:  No.  Keep in mind that my Psychological Science article summarized data from over 3,600 individuals.  Thus it reports on average findings.  There are always exceptions to any pattern of results in psychology.  It is always dangerous to generalize "on average" findings to individuals.  There are many high-sex-drive women who are attracted just to men or just to women.

Question: You say that men are more "black or white" in their sexual orientation, whereas women have more "shades of gray."  Does this mean there are no truly bisexual men?  And does it mean that men who call themselves "bisexual" are really gay?

Answer:  No, and no. I believe that bisexual men do exist, but they are relatively rare, and they are certainly rarer than bisexual women.  In data from the BBC Internet survey, which assessed over 200,000 people across the world, about 4% of men and about 7% of women labeled themselves as "bisexual."  This is almost a 2-to-1 female-to-male ratio.  The question of the nature of bisexuality, particularly in men, is controversial, both in the academic world and in sexual minority communities. 

Recent research conducted at Northwestern University (Chivers, Rieger, Latty, & Bailey, 2004) exposed men and women to erotic films that portrayed men having sex or women having sex and measured their physical sexual arousal to these films.  Men showed the pattern you would probably expect: Heterosexual men were "turned on" by sexy women, and gay men were "turned on" by sexy men.  However, women were "turned on" by both kinds of films.  The researchers concluded that men have a more "targeted" kind of sexual arousal (e.g., targeted either at men or at women), whereas women have more general and diffuse kind of sexual arousal.

Another recent study (Rieger, Chivers, & Bailey, 2005) looked at the physical arousal of self-identified bisexual men in response to films that portrayed sexy males or sexy females engaged in sex.  In general, these men were more aroused to male than to female stimuli.  This suggests that a significant proportion of self-identified bisexual men are more attracted to men than to women. 

It's important to note that there are many different kinds of bisexual identities, and researchers are just beginning to sort out the nature of these identities.  As I noted before, it's always dangerous to generalize "on average" research results to individual people.

Question: Why do men and women show such different patterns of same-sex and other-sex attraction?--e.g., why does sex drive energize attractions to both sexes if you're a woman, but only to one sex or the other if you're a man?

Answer:  We don't yet have a complete answer to these questions.  Like many topics in psychology, the question of "causes" often leads to nature-nurture debates. Are differences between men and women caused by "nature" (e.g., biology, genes, hormonal differences, etc.), or are they caused by "nurture" (rearing, social learning, culture, social institutions, etc.)  I have new evidence suggesting that there is very likely  a biological component to the male-female differences I report in my Psychological Science article.  In analyses of over 200,000 people surveyed by the BBC Internet survey, I've found that my findings replicate in many different countries (e.g., the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, India, Singapore) and world regions (western Europe, eastern Europe, Latin America, North America, Asia).  My results also proved to be equally true for younger (≤ 30 years old) and older (> 30 years old) people.  That the findings are so consistent across countries, cultures, and age groups suggests that there is something "biological" going on.  Otherwise, the different socialization and rearing practices of various cultures and the different social norms and institutions in various cultures would lead to more variable results.

Of course, even if there are biological factors at work here, this does not mean that there are not also social and cultural factors that influence same-sex and other-sex attractions in men and women.

Question:  Were there any groups of women who did not show the "high sex drive leads to increased attraction to both sexes" effect?

Answer: Yes, lesbian women.  They showed the more male-typical pattern.  That is, their results were like those for heterosexual men--high sex drive in lesbians was associated with increased attraction to women, but not to men.  Why lesbians differ from most other women in this regard is not clear.  It might have something to do with prenatal hormonal influences, but this is just speculation.

References

Chivers, M. L., Rieger, G., Latty, E., & Bailey, M. J. (2004). A sex difference in the specificity of sexual arousal.  Psychological Science, 15, 736-744.

Rieger, G., Chivers, M. L., & Bailey, J. M. (2005). Sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men. Psychological Science, 16, 579-584.