Exposed as a myth: Men don’t have a one-track mind... they think about sleep and food as much as sex
.Rumour has long had it that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.
And it turns out it’s true. Men spend more time thinking about food – and sleep – than they do about sex, a study shows.
They think about all three more often than women do.
Food for thought: Men spend more time thinking about food - and sleep - than they do about sex, a study shows
The research found that, contrary to popular wisdom, men do not think about sex every seven seconds.
In reality, it is more like once every waking hour.
The study was carried out by Professor Terri Fisher, a psychologist at the Ohio State University in the U.S.
She asked 163 students – male and female – to carry around a chart and mark it every time they thought about sex, food or sleep.
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The numbers varied widely, from one student who only recorded one sexual thought a day to a male who wrote down 388 in 24 hours.
But on average, men thought about food and sleep more often than they thought about sex.
And they thought about all three more often than women did.
Prof Fisher said: ‘Men are more aware of need-related states such as being hungry or tired or sexually aroused, and focus on those. They are also better at detecting these states in themselves than women and more willing to express their thoughts.’
Men are more aware of need-related states such as being hungry, according to the psychologist who carried out the study
She added that even the student who thought about sex 388 times in a day was only thinking about it every 158 seconds – far fewer than the ‘every seven seconds’ that myth would suggest.
‘When people hear about some of these differences, I think sometimes they don’t question it because it fits the stereotypes we have of men and women,’ Prof Fisher said.
‘When you stop and take a closer look at the origins of some of these alleged differences, they sometimes have no empirical support.’
Behavioural Psychologist Jo Hemmings, author of How To Have Great Sex, explains why men are so preoccupied with their stomachs.
She told MailOnline: ‘There tend to be more trigger mechanisms to thinking about food. The sights and smells associated with eating, as well as simple hunger or thirst, tend to be more commonplace in everyday life than the trigger mechanism for thinking about sex, so inevitably we think more about it.'
Aside from this, those with a mathematical mind will have realised that the ‘sex every seven seconds’ stereotype doesn't make sense.
For to achieve this, a man, if he was awake for 16 hours, would be thinking about sex 8,000 times a day - or as often as breathing.
However, Hemmings explained that men are 'more "hot wired" to think about sex from the physiological point of view, so they invariably think about it more than women'.
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