You can’t help it; if you’re plugged into popular culture at all, you’ll come away with the idea that everybody is having a lot of sex. In fact, they’re having a lot of sex with a lot of different partners. This is particularly true if you watch television dramas: a cast of characters mix-and-match from week to week, moving from one passionate moment to the next. Those of us living in real life – which can often look very different – can’t help but feel like we’re missing out on something. In short, whether we admit it or not, compared to those characters it seems like we’re dating a lot less than we should be. But how accurate is this perception? How many partners do most Americans really have?

Luckily for us, researchers have asked this question; specifically, how many people has the average American adult had sex with in the past 12 months? Despite what you see on TV, no matter how you divide it, the answer is one ^{1, 2}. Regardless of the age group, and regardless of geographic area, Americans tend to have slept with one partner in the previous 12 months. This is a far cry from the string of hookups we see celebrated on TV. In fact, as many as 80% of Americans have had either zero or one sexual partner in the last year. And what of the rest? If someone was part of the minority that had more than one partner, it is most likely that they had fewer than four (only 3% of Americans had five or more).

Of course, this is just looking at number of partners in a single year. What about if we extend the time frame out to five years, surely then the numbers will start to add up? Actually, only 4% of people have had ten or more sexual partners in the last five years, which hardly lives up to the stereotype so popular in the media.

The truth is, people tend to form long-term relationships, and they tend to wait a while before having sex with a new boyfriend or girlfriend ¹. The perception of everyone coming home with a different person each weekend is statistically very, very improbable. But what about the celebrated freedom of the college years? Have 30 years of low-budget campus comedies been lying to us? Although there were some differences between age groups (with the younger people tending to acquire more partners), these differences were almost negligible.

Given the rather surprising finding that Americans tend to have a single partner per year, we wondered whether or not this was common knowledge. At least as far as college students are concerned, it isn’t. A series of studies have found that college students tend to vastly overestimate the sexually permissive attitudes and behaviors of their peers. Case in point: the National College Health Association survey ³ of almost 30,000 college students in 2002 showed that these young adults believed 85% of their peers had been with two or more sexual partners, when the reality was a far lower 28%. Furthermore, they also vastly underestimated the percentage of their peers who were not sexually active. Students’ assumptions about their peers’ attitudes towards sex appear to be similarly inaccurate. Additional studies have shown students over-estimate their peers’ level of comfort with sexual behavior ⁴ and sexual activity while not in a relationship (i.e. “hooking-up”) ⁵, as well as expectations for how soon in a relationship sexual intercourse should occur ⁶.

This brings up an interesting question: if Americans tend to be largely monogamous, why does it seem like everyone is getting a lot more action than the data support? Well, partly because that’s what makes for good TV. A study from 2006 found that college students believed that others were a lot more sexually promiscuous than they actually were, and that they had gotten that idea from watching TV ⁷. In fact, the more entertainment media a person is exposed to, the higher their estimates tend to be ⁸. However, it might also depend on who we compare ourselves to in real life; people tend to pay attention to new and different things (in other words, the people who stand out in the crowd), and are more likely to notice things that support what they already believe. If we believe that the average person’s love life is filled with a constant stream of new men or women, we may tend to remember the one popular person who appears to fit this stereotype, rather than the 99 others standing alone at the bar – or the countless others sitting at home.

References

1. Gagnon, J. H., Michael, R. T., & Michaels, S. (1994). The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2. Zimmer-Gembeck, M., & Collins, W. (2008). Gender, mature appearance, alcohol use, and dating as correlates of sexual partner accumulation from ages 16-26 years. Journal of Adolescent Health, 42(6), 564-572.
3. American College Health Association. (2002) National College Health Assessment: Reference Group Report. Baltimore, MD: American College Health Association.
4. Cohen, L. L., & Shotland, R. L. (1996). Timing of first sexual intercourse in a relationship: Expectations, experiences, and perceptions of others. Journal of Sex Research, 33(4), 291-299.
5. Lambert, T. A., Kahn, A. S., & Apple, K. J. (2003). Pluralistic ignorance and hooking up. Journal of Sex Research, 40(2), 129-133.
6. Hines, D., Saris, R., & Throckmorton-Belzer, L. (2002). Pluralistic ignorance and health risk behaviors: Do college students misperceive social approval for risky behaviors on campus and in media? Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 32(12), 2621-2640.
7. Chia, C. S., & Gunther, A. C. (2006). How media contribute to misperceptions of social norms about sex. Mass Communication and Society, 9(3), 301-320.
8. Buerkel-Rothfuss, N. L., & Strouse, J. S. (1993). Background: What prior research shows. In B. S. Greenberg, J. D. Brown, & N. Buerkel-Rothfuss (Eds.), Media, sex, and the adolescent (pp. 225-247). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc.

When we’re attracted to someone, but the relationship does not progress smoothly towards romance, it’s easy for us to question ourselves. We ask why he or she doesn’t seem interested, and the answers we come up with often reflect our insecurities. We may worry that we’re unattractive, not successful enough, too old, or just not interesting enough to be liked by the object of our affection. The reality underlying the situation is likely to be a bit different: research has shown that romantic relationships can fail to develop even when both people are attracted to each other ¹.

Most of the advice readily available to the shy or lovelorn focuses on the right way to dress, talk, or act in social situations. But what if our dating difficulties are not due to a lack of attractiveness or social grace? Researchers have demonstrated that our internal perceptions may be as important (or even more important) than our clothing or behavior ^{2, 3}.

A group of researchers in Canada have shed some light on how anxiety about dating can affect our ability to interact with men or women we are attracted to. They point out that, when we are interested in someone, we are faced with what psychologists call an approach-avoidance conflict: we want to pursue a flirtatious, romantic interaction (which requires approaching them, both physically and socially), yet we are fearful of the prospect of being rejected (which leads us to want to avoid any situation that could lead to rejection) ⁴. When faced with this conflict, what do we do? A full three quarters of us are likely to avoid directly communicating attraction (or flirting, in plain English) to our potential romantic partner for fear of being shot down ⁵! Furthermore, as we’ll soon see, when we do communicate our interest, we are likely to overestimate how much interest we are actually showing.

In the first of two studies looking at people’s perceptions about how much attraction they communicate, participants (both men and women) viewed videos of introductions from attractive, young, opposite-sex models. They were then asked to record their own response to the model (speaking into a camera, webcam style), and were told that their responses would be shown to the model whose introduction they had viewed. Instead, these recordings were actually shown to a different group of people (of the same sex as the model), who were asked how attracted they thought the participant was to the person the video was made for. For example, a man viewed an introduction from an attractive young female model, and recorded a response for her; then another woman viewed his response, and rated how attracted she thought he was to the model. The researchers also asked the participants to rate how much attraction they thought they had shown in their response videos. When the participants’ ratings were compared to the groups’ ratings, the results were intriguing. The participants who reported fearing rejection thought they were communicating more attraction than they actually were ⁴.

In a follow-up study, the same researchers tested this phenomenon again, but used face-to-face interactions with opposite sex participants instead of videos. This time, the participants who feared rejection not only showed far less interest than they believed (as above), but they also appeared far less attracted to the their interaction partners than they actually were. In other words, when they liked someone, they didn’t show it. In fact, the more attracted they were, the less attracted they appeared ⁴.

This might lead you to ask why people tend to communicate so little attraction when they are actually interested in another person. The researcher’s explanation was that people suppress or clamp down on their signals of attraction when the risk of rejection is too high ⁴. Remember the approach avoidance conflict from above, and the finding that 75% of us may opt for avoidance in such a situation? We may not intend to completely stifle all signs of interest, but the problem is that we are poor judges of how much attraction we are really showing – if we feel attracted internally, we may assume that it is obvious to others in our behavior externally. So we clamp down hard to try to control how others see us, and end up hiding our attraction (especially when we’re afraid of rejection or with people we’re very attracted to).

Now consider what this might mean for your own daily life: that person that you’ve been flirting with might have no idea you’re interested! And, if the object of your affection does not respond, it might not mean that you are being rejected. Your signals might just be too subtle to be noticed (not to mention the difficulties we have when it comes to recognizing the signs that someone is attracted to us, which is a topic for another day). But does it matter whether someone knows you’re interested? It sure does: research has shown that we like people who are interested in us romantically ⁶, and that we prefer to date the people we feel are most likely to accept us ⁷. So take the risk of being more obvious, and you might encourage someone else to do the same!

References

1. Sprecher, S., & Duck, S. (1994). Sweet talk: The importance of perceived communication for romantic and friendship attraction experienced during a get-acquainted date. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20(4), 391-400.
2. Holmes, J. G. (1991). Trust and the appraisal process in close relationships. In W. H. Jones & D. Perlman (Eds.), Advances in personal relationships (Vol. 2). London: Jessica Kingsley.
3. Orvis, B. R., Kelley, H. H., & Butler, D. (1976). Attributional conflict in young couples. In J. H. Harvey, W. J. Ickes, & R. F. Kidd (Eds.), New directions in attribution research (Vol. 1, pp. 353-386). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
4. Vorauer, J. D., Cameron, J. J., Holmes, J. G., & Pearce, D. G. (2003). Invisible overtures: Fears of rejection and the signal amplification bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 793-812.
5. Vorauer, J., & Ratner, R. (1996). Who’s going to make the first move? Pluralistic ignorance as an impediment to relationship formation. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 13(4), 483-506.
6. Aron, A., Dutton, D. G., Aron, E. N., & Iverson, A. (1989). Experiences of falling in love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 6(3), 243-257.
7. Shanteau, J., & Nagy, G. (1979). Probability of acceptance in dating choice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 522-533.