Preferred number of sexual partners: tails of distributions and tales of mating systems

Buss and Schmitt [Psychol. Rev. 100 (1993) 204-232] found that men report preferring more sex partners than women do. Pedersen, Miller, Putcha-Bhagavatula, and Yang et al. [Psychol. Sci. 13 (2002) 157-161] reanalyzed the data of Buss and Schmitt and also collected their own. They found no sex differences in either data set. We show that, when appropriate graphical and statistical methods are used, men clearly report preferring more partners. At all comparable locations on curves showing cumulative number of desired partners, men report preferring more than three times as many partners as women do. Furthermore, the data show that men and women who desire between one and about five desired partners over their lifetime come from a normal distribution, with a standard deviation of about 5. Thus it is incorrect to conclude that men and women who desire more that one lifetime sexual partner come from a different population than those who want only one. We discuss the implication of the data for sexual strategies theory [Psychol. Rev. 100 (1993) 204-232] and attachment fertility theory (AFT; Miller & Fishkin, 1997).