Ever wonder where the claim that men think about sex every seven seconds came from? It’s so widely known that Snopes has debunked it and we can assure you it’s not based on scientific research. A study from an Ohio State University shows that the real number is more like every 4,275 seconds, or about once an hour—not so different from how often women in the study thought about sex (about once every two hours). Men in the study were also more likely than women to think about other physical desires, including sleep and eating.
As if this study weren’t awesome enough already, it also looked at whether men were more likely than women to report thinking about sex simply because it’s such a common and accepted stereotype about them. Sure enough, the study found that gender had less to do with how often people thought about sex than whether they felt positive about sex in general. In other words, the more positively men and women felt about sex, the more they thought about it. The study also found that women who were more concerned about what their peers thought of them reported thinking about sex less often (no difference for men in that department). Apparently sometimes quality and quantity do go hand in hand. Now go think about something sexy.
