Study: Hypersexuality In Women Linked To High Porn Use
ATLANTA (CBS Atlanta) – According to a new study, women who have sex so frequently that it causes problems may be linked to high rates of masturbation and pornography use.
“A high number of myths concerning female hypersexuality still exist,” the authors told LiveScience.
The researchers asked almost 1,000 women in Germany how much they masturbated or watched porn, and how many sexual partners they had. Most of the women surveyed were college students.
The participants answered questions called Hypersexual Behavior Inventory, which includes 19 questions about how often a person uses sex to cope with emotional problems, whether engaging in sexual activity is outside one’s control and whether this sexual activity interferes with one’s work or school.
According to older studies, scoring high on that questionnaire meant one needed therapy. According to this study, about 3 percent were classified as hypersexual, LiveScience reports.
The results showed that the more frequently a woman masturbated or watched porn, the more likely she was to score high on the hypersexuality questionnaire.
The study found that a high number of sexual partners were also linked to hypersexuality.
“The results of the current study do not support the idea of previous research that hypersexual women are typically engaged in more passive forms of sexual behavior, and contradict the assumption that hypersexual women only use sexual behavior to control and influence interpersonal relationships,” the authors wrote in the study.
It is not clear if hypersexuality in women differs from men, as most studies on hypersexuality have been done on men.
“In many cases, it’s much more permissible for men to engage in hypersexuality as opposed to women,” Rory Reid, an assistant professor and research psychologist at UCLA who was not involved in the study, told LiveScience. “Men would be often just characterized as ‘men being men’ if they engaged in hypersexual behaviors.”
The study found that hypersexual behaviors in women mirrored those found in hypersexual men. Such behaviors include pornography dependence, excessive masturbation, and promiscuity.
The study also found that hypersexual women tend to be bisexual. Most hypersexual men tend to me heterosexual.
Experts still debate how much sex is too much sex, but say that hypersexual behavior is only a problem when it causes stress or shame, or results in negative consequences in a person’s life such as job loss.
“It is still a challenge for researchers to identify individuals who may require treatment, without falsely stigmatizing others and their ‘normal’ or nonpathological sexual behavior,” the researchers said.
The study was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.