According to seriously buzzed-about new research, men who are attractive, funny, confident, and have money are also more likely to make you orgasm. Wait, what?!
The study,
published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology, suggests that random things like your partner's sense of humor, his family income, and his age could influence your O. They also suggest that the width of his shoulders and the age when you first had sex could play a role in your sexual satisfaction. Since these results seem kind of out there, we thought it might be a good idea to take another peek at the research to see if you should really base your boyfriend-search around this.
For the study, researchers asked 54 female college students who were in exclusive, heterosexual relationships and were engaging in P-in-V intercourse to take an online survey about their sex life, their feelings about their partner, and the physical and psychological traits of their partner. After the students completed the survey, researchers compiled the data to try to find out how these factors were connected.
The researchers used a statistical method to draw conclusions about what factors predicted the women’s orgasm frequency, orgasm intensity, how often they had multiple orgasms, and sexual satisfaction—and here’s what they found:
Frequent orgasms were positively correlated with orgasm intensity, sexual satisfaction with their partner, physical attraction to their partner, their partner’s family income, and his self-confidence. Plus, higher ratings of a guy's sense of humor were linked with how frequently his partner had orgasms and how often they had sex.
The factors connected with intense orgasms included higher levels of orgasm frequency, the number of orgasms per encounter, sexual satisfaction with their man, partner attractiveness, and frequency of sex.
Finally, they found that a women's sexual satisfaction was positively correlated with several traits, including: her partner’s attractiveness, feeling protected by her partner, how much of a catch she thought her partner was, the younger she was when she first had sex, how much she loves him, how often they have sex, her partner’s shoulder width, and how many sexual partners she’s had.
Clearly some of these findings are pretty random. (Ahem, the broader his shoulders, the better your sex life?) So what accounts for these interesting claims? The study authors note that previous research has actually shown that females in committed relationships with guys who are bilaterally symmetrical and/or make a lot of money have more orgasms.
"These traits are things that might indicate that a man has good genes that would be passed on to his kids," says study author Gordon Gallup, Ph.D., professor of psychology at the University of Albany. And based on previous research, some theories state that a woman's orgasm might have evolved to show if a guy would be a good genetic match, he says.
That said, there are definitely limitations to the surprising findings in this current study. One of the main issues is that the sample of 54 women was on the small side, which could make the results less reliable, says Gallup.
Additionally, the types of questions on the survey—like how the women would estimate the value of their partner's family income, the width of their shoulders, and how their friends would rate his physical attractiveness—were subjective. In the study, the authors write that the participants' answers could have been influenced by positivity bias, meaning they painted an overly positive picture of their man while taking the survey. Though they tried to control for this by adding a question about how their friends would rate their partner's good looks (since their friends weren't actually answering the question), it might not have helped. "There's always the possibility with self-reporting that people could exaggerate," says Gallup. And really, who wouldn't say their friends think their boyfriend is hot?
On top of that, the results themselves are purely correlational. None of these results are strong enough to prove causation, says Gallup. That means that while these factors might frequently occur at the same time as an intense orgasm or satisfying sex life, one doesn’t necessarily cause the other.
And since the researchers were computing so many data points, the significance of some of these correlations might not be as strong as they appear. "The more correlations you run, the greater the chance that you'll find a significant one that is just significant due to chance," he says. "We should view these findings with caution because of the small sample size. If the study had been done on 300 to 400 females, then it would be more likely that even the smallest correlations would be more reliable," he says.
The bottom line: While these findings are definitely interesting—and might shed some light on how your subconscious drive to pass down good genes could impact your sex life—the results don't conclusively show if your man's hilarious one-liners are the secret to an earth shattering climax. If you're really interested in intensifying your orgasms, check out these
nine positions that practically guarantee an orgasm—regardless of his sense of humor or size of his shoulders.
