Having more sex does not translate into greater happiness, says a study
It is very easy and intuitive to relate the amount of sex you have with the levels of happiness we experience . It seems common sense to think that sexual satisfaction plays an important role in human psychology and to the degree to which we are content with life; Even one of the first references in the history of psychology, Sigmund Freud, gave human sexuality a leading role in the development of our personality.
In addition, as we saw in another article, we know that during sexual relations several strategic areas of our body begin to emit and to capture a greater amount of hormones related to the feeling of well-being and the creation of affective bonds that make us feel good. Even from evolutionary psychology, we talk about the origin of many innate psychological characteristics in our species, linking their origins to sex!
More quantity of sex, greater happiness. Insurance?
However, science is among other things to test the ideas that common sense gives for confirmed. And, at least in the field of subjective satisfaction with life, it seems that a greater amount of sexual intercourse or has to be equivalent to an increase in perceived happiness .
This is indicated by a study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.
Starting from a simple question
There is a lot of research that indicates that people who feel happier are also those who tend to have more sex than the average. This correlation, like almost all of them, is quite confusing and raises many questions about the way in which perceived happiness and the amount of sex interact: Is happiness the one that leads to a more active sexual life, or vice versa? Or maybe there is a third unknown variable that generates both an increase in happiness levels and the frequency of sexual relations?
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University were justified in exploring the possible causal relationships that could be found between happiness and the sexual life of people. Specifically, They sought to answer the question of whether more sex increases levels of happiness or not . And they did it in the most crude way possible: recruiting a certain number of couples and assigning them very specific duties, consisting in doubling the frequency with which they used to make love, for 90 days in a row.
The investigation was done well
Of course, these people were not the only ones who participated in the study. In total 64 couples were recruited, but only half had to increase the amount of sex they would have for several months . The rest were given instructions of any kind in the sexual, since it should be part of what is known as control group. All the members of the couples, regardless of whether they had to double the frequency with which they had sex or not, should fill out a series of questionnaires during the three months that the data collection phase lasted.
The questions that appeared in these questionnaires dealt with the levels of happiness perceived, the health habits that were being maintained and the satisfaction found in sex.
The results, somewhat disconcerting
The main conclusion reached through the study was that not only more sex does not give greater happiness, but it can make it decrease . In addition, many of the couples who had to increase the frequency of relationships became significantly less motivated by sex. If level of desire had decreased.
Of course, this does not mean that deliberately increasing sexual activity for three months will always affect us negatively: for example, if instead of focusing on the amount of effort to improve the quality of this, the results could be others.
