Who's More Likely to Say Yes to an Offer of Sex From a Stranger, Men or Women?
The answer may surprise you! Just kidding; it won't.
In one of the most famous studies in psychology, psychologists Russell Clark and Elaine Hatfield had accomplices approach young men and women on a busy U.S. campus and say “Hi. I’ve been noticing you around town lately, and I find you very attractive.” The accomplices then made one of the following propositions:
“Would you go out with me tonight?”
“Would you come over to my apartment tonight?”
“Would you go to bed with me tonight?”
The results of this odd experiment are shown in the following graph.
Here’s how I described the results in my book The Ape That Understood the Universe.
For the first question (“Would you go out with me?”), there was no sex difference; around half the men and half the women said yes while the other half demurred. For the second question (“Would you come to my apartment?”), a large sex difference opened up: 69 percent of men said yes, as opposed to just six percent of women. But for the last question (“Would you go to bed with me?”), the gender gap was huge: 75 percent of men said yes… as opposed to zero percent of women.
Not only did more women than men turn down the kind offer of sex, among those who did, there was a striking sex difference in the manner of the refusal. Most of the men were apologetic, explaining that they were married or had a prior engagement, and in some cases asking if they could get a rain check. The women, in contrast, were not apologetic. Typical responses included “You’ve got to be kidding” and “What’s wrong with you?” None of the men asked what was wrong with the woman offering him sex. Incidentally, history doesn’t record how the participants in the study reacted after being told they were in an experiment. If the study’s findings are anything to go by, though, there were a lot of disappointed guys at the end of the day, and a lot of relieved women.
The original study was conducted in the 1970s. Since then, the basic result has been replicated by other research teams in other times and places. The sex difference in receptivity to sexual propositions from strangers is one of psychology’s most replicable findings.
Still, the most recent replication was around a decade ago, and during that time, we’ve seen a strong challenge to traditional gender roles and attitudes to sex. Would the result still hold up today?
That’s the question addressed by a new paper in The Journal of Social Psychology. Authors Sascha Kunz and Tobias Greitemeyer conducted two naturalistic experiments looking at men and women’s likelihood of saying yes to each of the three Clark-and-Hatfield questions. The following tables show the results from the two studies. You can probably guess the gist of what they found.
As your grandmother could have told you, men are still notably more willing to say yes to an offer of sex from a random stranger. The differences are particularly large among single people, but are found as well among the partnered.
Despite replicating the key sex difference, Kunz and Greitemeyer’s findings do differ in several ways from the original Clark and Hatfield results. First, whereas men and women in the original study were equally likely to say yes to a date, in the new studies, men were more likely to. This means that men were more likely to say yes to all three offers, not just the apartment and bed offers. Other replications have found the same thing.
Second, and more strikingly, the number of yes responses was considerably lower in the new studies than in the original Clark and Hatfield one. As Kunz and Greitemeyer observed, “Overall, it seems that the receptivity to casual sexual offers from both men and women has dramatically decreased over time. In fact, most of our participants, women and men alike, did not accept any of the three offers.”
Still, despite differences in the absolute numbers, the sex difference in receptivity remains stubbornly intact, 45 years after the original study.
I sometimes hear that we’re in the middle of a gender revolution, and that the new generation is rethinking and overturning the old ways. What people seem to forget is that this isn’t the first time this has happened; we’ve had attempted gender revolutions every decade or so since at least the 1960s. Yet some things never change.
From time to time, students ask me whether I think sex differences like this one will eventually disappear or even reverse. Will women in ten years or twenty years be just as open to casual sex with strangers as men are, if not more so? I generally tell them that, although it’s possible in principle, it seems very unlikely to me given the current evidence. My gut reaction to the question, though, isn’t so measured. My gut reaction is the answer your grandmother might have given: “Of course not!”
Follow Steve on Twitter/X for more psychology, evolution, and science.
This post was free to read for all. If you enjoyed it, please feel free to share it!
To help support my work, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription. A paid subscription will get you: (1) full access to all new posts and the archive, (2) full access to my “12 Things Everyone Should Know” posts, Linkfests, and other regular features, and (3) the ability to post comments and interact with the N3 Newsletter community.
Thanks!
Steve
If, when I was an unattached college student, a nubile young lady had approached me with such an offer, I’d have wanted to say yes, but such an offer is so far outside female norms that I’d probably have said no. Not because I wouldn’t want to, but because I’d figure it was some sort of trap -- I’d be robbed or wake up in a bathtub with no kidneys or some such. Or that the girl was just crazy.