Why do the young have sex?

After exhaustively compiling a list of the 237 reasons why people have sex, researchers found that young men and women get intimate for mostly the same motivations.

It is more about lust in the body than a love connection in the heart.

US college-aged men and women agree on their top reasons for having sex -

They were attracted to the person,

They wanted to experience physical pleasure

And "it feels good"

Twenty of the top 25 reasons given for having sex were the same for men and women.

Expressing love and showing affection were in the top 10 for both men and women,

But they did take a back seat to the clear No. 1: "I was attracted to the person."

Researchers at the University of Texas spent five years and their own money to study the overlooked "why" behind sex while others were spending their time on the "how".

"It's refuted a lot of gender stereotypes ...

That men only want sex for the physical pleasure and women want love," said University of Texas clinical psychology professor Cindy Meston, the study's co-author.

"That's not what I came up with in my findings."

"The more we look, the more we find similarity," said Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego.

Dr Goldstein, who was not part of Professor Meston's study, said the Texas research made a lot of sense

And added to growing evidence that the vaunted differences in the genders might only be among people with sexual problems.
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Professor Meston and colleague David Buss first questioned 444 men and women - ranging in age from 17 to 52 - to come up with a list of 237 distinct reasons people have sex.

They ranged from "it's fun", which men ranked fourth and women ranked eighth

Once they came up with that long list, the researchers asked 1549 college students taking psychology classes to rank the reasons on a one-to-five scale on how they applied to their experiences.
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"None of the gender differences are all that great," Professor Meston said.

"Men were more likely to be opportunistic towards having sex, so if sex was there and available they would jump on it, somewhat more so than women.

Women were more likely to have sex because they felt they needed to please their partner."

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.But this is among college students, when Professor Meston conceded "hormones run rampant".

She predicted huge differences when older groups of people are studied.
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AP

Quite so