NYTimes: Why do men lie about sex?

[nomadologist]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/weekinreview/12kolata.html

edit: before anyone gets mad, i know the article makes it clear women could be under-reporting their partners.

 

[john eden]

It does make it clear, but the headline is misleading.

It seems to me that people lie about sex because society slots them into specific gender roles which sometimes create dissonance with what their actual experiences.

 

[nomadologist]

Yup. It's funny, though, (to me) that this carries over into tests where the results are anonymous, and the test taker has very little at stake.

I have to applaud the Times for finally casting doubt over all of their falsely reported "gender differences" stories...

 

[Mr. Tea]

They do actually mention the most obvious source of a real difference, i.e. prostitutes, who aren't likely to be included in a survey.

 

[STN]

Yup. It's funny, though, (to me) that this carries over into tests where the results are anonymous, and the test taker has very little at stake.

It's a bit trite to say this but I think to tell a really convincing lie, you have to have already convinced yourself it's true. A lot of people do this, particularly in this area I think.

 

[STN]

They do actually mention the most obvious source of a real difference, i.e. prostitutes, who aren't likely to be included in a survey.

Does this make us chaps look better or worse, do you reckon?

 

[nomadologist]

They do actually mention the most obvious source of a real difference, i.e. prostitutes, who aren't likely to be included in a survey.

Right, but then one of the mathematicians says that the influence of prostitutes on a single population is likely to be neglible in terms of briding a 75% gap in partner-reporting numbers.

 

[john eden]

There might be all sorts of other reasons for there being women who don't appear in the sample. Perhaps some women simply refuse to answer questions about their sex life?

 

[nomadologist]

It's a bit trite to say this but I think to tell a really convincing lie, you have to have already convinced yourself it's true. A lot of people do this, particularly in this area I think.

I truly wonder about this. Among the males and females who I'm close enough with to know all their partners offhand, I would say there is no difference in number, although there is more of an understood difference in quality of sexual encounter for the females versus the males.

Quantity doesn't equal quality when it comes to sex.

 

[nomadologist]

There might be all sorts of other reasons for there being women who don't appear in the sample. Perhaps some women simply refuse to answer questions about their sex life?

If that were the case, that would have factored into the difference (the number of "refuse to answers") and they would have probably said something about it in the article.

I wonder if women are shy about being honest on these tests anymore...

 

[john eden]

If that were the case, that would have factored into the difference (the number of "refuse to answers") and they would have probably said something about it in the article.

I wonder if women are shy about being honest on these tests anymore...

I dunno, the article was certainly coming from a specific angle (men lie-ing about sex) and I think what we all agree on is that it raises more questions than it answers.

I think STN is on the money with the delusion thing. It's like doctors asking people how much they drink and then adding another 50% to get the real figure...

 

[Mr. Tea]

So do people (on here) think it's a) men lying and women being honest, as claimed in the article; b) men telling the truth and women being overly modest for fear of seeming 'slutty', or c) some lying both ways? (or d) men, but not women, counting a drunken fumble in a nightclub as a 'sexual encounter' )

 

[nomadologist]

I dunno, the article was certainly coming from a specific angle (men lie-ing about sex) and I think what we all agree on is that it raises more questions than it answers.

I think STN is on the money with the delusion thing. It's like doctors asking people how much they drink and then adding another 50% to get the real figure...

The only analogy I can make for myself is probably with drugs (since I like drugs about fifty-million times better than sex anyway): what would I say on a test that asked me to caculate how much cocaine I've ever done. It would be really really hard to say. I would probably end up overestimating. Psychologically, I would be afraid of *underestimating* and skewing the results toward a smaller "net" use for respondents.


I think the problem might be that any question about promiscuity or drug use is immediately a leading question, with different implications depending upon certain social factors.

 

[STN]

A good mate of mine has an anecdote to do with this sort of thing which I am 95% certain is utterly false (because he is such a bad liar) it first surfaced around 95, and to me it was obvious then it was false, as time's gone on he's been able to tell it with fewer and fewer of the (to me very obvious) signs that he is not telling the truth and I'm sure he now thinks it's true. I should add that he didn't come up with it out of some horrible bravado but because I think he felt he'd been outstripped (stop iiiiiit!) by his peers, many of whom may well have been lying. I should also add that back then we were teenagers, so this may not reflect at all on adult males but it does, I think, show the ability to convince oneself of these things.

 

[nomadologist]

A good mate of mine has an anecdote to do with this sort of thing which I am 95% certain is utterly false (because he is such a bad liar) it first surfaced around 95, and to me it was obvious then it was false, as time's gone on he's been able to tell it with fewer and fewer of the (to me very obvious) signs that he is not telling the truth and I'm sure he now thinks it's true. I should add that he didn't come up with it out of some horrible bravado but because I think he felt he'd been outstripped (stop iiiiiit!) by his peers, many of whom may well have been lying. I should also add that back then we were teenagers, so this may not reflect at all on adult males but it does, I think, show the ability to convince oneself of these things.

Don't even get me started on teenage boys lying about sex! I can barely refrain from interrupting kids on the bus/subway who start brazenly lying about the sex they have...so many girls get branded "sluts" by guys who never even actually had sex with them.

Teenagers

 

[STN]

Indeed, teenagers are a pretty hideous bunch (I was a particularly dreadful creature), but I think some blokes may well have a whole bunch of lies from when they were teenage boys that they've simply forgotten aren't true.

In answer to Tea's question I'd be kind of surprised and disappointed if the number of blokes prepared to lie in an anonymous survey was enough to be the sole reason for skewing the sample.

 

[nomadologist]

Indeed, teenagers are a pretty hideous bunch (I was a particularly dreadful creature), but I think some blokes may well have a whole bunch of lies from when they were teenage boys that they've simply forgotten aren't true.

In answer to Tea's question I'd be kind of surprised and disappointed if the number of blokes prepared to lie in an anonymous survey was enough to be the sole reason for skewing the sample.

I think women probably under-reported as well, not just men over-reporting. 75% is a hell of a gap...

 

[Electric Angel]

The first sentence alone made me disregard anything else written. Looked like a bunch of poorly-written, journalistic shite.

 

[Mr. Tea]

In answer to Tea's question I'd be kind of surprised and disappointed if the number of blokes prepared to lie in an anonymous survey was enough to be the sole reason for skewing the sample.

Exactly - it's anonymous, so even if you're the sort of guy who considers things like that impressive, there isn't anyone to impress!

 

[Guybrush]

I read the article on the train, so I don’t remember all the details (though I think it was 4 or 5 sex partners for women and some 3 or 4 more for men, which makes the 75 percent difference seem greater than it is). Two additional hypotheses to the ones already brought forth: 1. A statistically, if not numerically, significant number of the male respondents have bonked a large number of prostitutes. My impression (from their writing) is that they typically cover at least 5 women over a weekender in Prague or wherever; I read somewhere that about 1 million German men pay visit to a cathouse at least once a week — prostitution is legal in Germany — you do the maths; 2. The hunch amongst my friends and I is that women, on average, have had fewer sex partners than men, but that there is a greater discrepancy on the male side (i.e. a great number of men have had very few sexual encounters and a small number of men have had a great many). I could imagine that the kind of men who would lower the mean value in these kinds of surveys are the exact ones that would hesitate to participate, for any number of reasons.