Women display more fluidity in sexual attractions and fantasies than men

A new analysis of data from over 50,000 individuals indicates that men exhibit a more exclusive pattern of sexual attraction than women do. The research shows that while men strongly prefer one gender over the other, women tend to display a wider range of potential attractions. These results appear in The Journal of Sex Research.

For decades, researchers have attempted to map the differences in how men and women experience sexual desire. Older investigations often relied on measuring physical signs of arousal in a laboratory setting. Those experiments frequently suggested that men are “gender-specific.” This means men typically show physical arousal only when viewing the gender they prefer.

In contrast, those same historical studies often found that straight women displayed physical arousal when viewing images of both men and women. This led to a prevailing theory that female sexuality is inherently less specific than male sexuality. However, it remained unclear if this pattern applied to psychological feelings of attraction or fantasies.

Sapir Keinan-Bar, Yoav Bar-Anan, and Daphna Joel conducted the current investigation to answer this question. They are researchers affiliated with the School of Psychological Sciences and the Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel-Aviv University. They sought to determine if the gender gap in specificity exists when measuring self-reported feelings and subconscious associations. They also aimed to see how these patterns manifest across different sexual orientations.

The team aggregated data from three separate large-scale online datasets. The total pool of participants included 56,892 individuals. The datasets contained information from volunteers who had visited research websites or utilized paid survey platforms.

The researchers analyzed responses to direct questions regarding sexual identity. Participants rated their level of attraction to men and women on numerical scales. They also reported the frequency of their erotic fantasies involving men or women. This allowed the authors to compare conscious reports of desire.

In addition to direct questions, the study utilized indirect measures of attraction. One primary tool used was the Implicit Association Test (IAT). This computerized task measures the strength of mental links between concepts.

During an IAT, a participant might sort words or images into categories like “Men” or “Women” and “I am sexually attracted” or “I am not sexually attracted.” The speed at which a participant sorts these items reveals their automatic associations. A faster response time suggests a stronger underlying mental connection.

The researchers also used a variation called the Questionnaire-Based Implicit Association Test (qIAT). This version uses statements rather than single words or images. It assesses attraction to men and women separately rather than comparing them directly.

The analysis of this massive dataset revealed a consistent pattern. Men generally exhibited greater gender-specificity than women. This trend appeared across self-reported attraction, fantasy frequency, and the indirect association measures.

The data provided a detailed look at why this gap exists. Men reported very high levels of attraction toward their preferred gender. At the same time, they reported very low levels of attraction toward their non-preferred gender. This created a large statistical gap between their likes and dislikes.

Women showed a different profile. They reported slightly lower levels of attraction to their preferred gender compared to men. More importantly, they reported higher levels of attraction to their non-preferred gender than men did. This finding suggests that women are psychologically more open to their non-preferred gender.

The study clarified the nature of attraction among heterosexual women. Contrary to some interpretations of older physiological studies, straight women were not completely non-specific. They clearly preferred men over women in both self-reports and indirect measures.

However, the intensity of this preference was not as exclusive as the preference straight men held for women. Straight women demonstrated a distinct preference, but the separation was less extreme. The researchers noted that this pattern was robust across the different samples.

The study also examined individuals who identified as gay or lesbian. The researchers found that the gender gap in specificity was different in these groups. The large difference seen between straight men and women was often smaller, absent, or reversed among gay and lesbian participants.

For example, lesbian women showed levels of specificity that were sometimes similar to, or even higher than, gay men. This suggests that the high degree of exclusivity observed in straight men might be a unique characteristic of that specific group. It may not be a universal trait of male sexuality.

The analysis of sexual fantasies reinforced the findings regarding attraction. Men reported fantasies almost exclusively about their preferred gender. Women reported fantasies primarily about their preferred gender, but with more frequent exceptions than men.

The authors evaluated several theoretical explanations for these results. One common theory posits that men simply have a higher sex drive than women. The data presented a challenge to this idea.

If men simply had a higher sex drive, they should report higher attraction to everyone. Instead, women reported higher attraction to their non-preferred gender than men did. This indicates that the difference is not just about the total amount of sexual desire.

Another theory considers the impact of social norms. Society often imposes strict expectations on heterosexual masculinity. Men face social penalties for showing interest in other men.

This social pressure might encourage men to report extreme attraction to women and deny any attraction to men. This would create the highly specific pattern observed in the data. Women generally face less social stigma for expressing flexibility in their attractions.

The authors also discussed the theory of sexual objectification. Western culture frequently portrays women as sexual objects. This cultural conditioning might cause individuals of all genders to develop some degree of attraction toward women.

The results offered some support for this objectification hypothesis. Across the board, attraction to the non-preferred gender was higher when that gender was female. For instance, straight women reported more attraction to women than straight men reported to men.

The researchers pointed out the benefits of using detailed categories for sexual orientation. The study allowed participants to identify as “mostly straight” or “mostly gay” rather than just using three rigid categories. This nuance revealed that people in the “mostly” categories drove much of the flexibility seen in the data.

Women were more likely than men to identify with these “mostly” categories. Men were more likely to identify as “exclusively” straight or gay. This difference in self-identification aligns with the finding that men are more gender-specific in their attractions.

There are limitations to this research. The data came from online samples, which may not perfectly represent the general population. The participants were primarily English speakers and likely skewed younger and more liberal.

The measures relied on honesty in self-reporting and the assumption that reaction times reflect attraction. These are proxies for real-world experience. The study did not measure physiological arousal, so it cannot be directly compared to the older laboratory studies on that metric.

Future research could explore these patterns in different cultures. Examining societies with different gender norms could help separate biological tendencies from social conditioning. It would be useful to see if the high specificity of straight men persists in cultures with different concepts of masculinity.

The study, “Gender-Specificity in Sexual Attraction and Fantasies: Evidence from Self-Report and Indirect Measures,” was authored by Sapir Keinan-Bar, Yoav Bar-Anan, and Daphna Joel.