Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
|
Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
I'm not sure how any of the findings are anything other than obvious.
Also you can probably argue for a significant discrepancy between people's self-professed motivations for carrying out an act, and the real reasons why theyre doing it. The fact that none of the respondants apparently cited social expectations as a factor gives an indication of how big a grain of salt the results should be taken with. There are a lot of methodological problems with trying to find out why someone does something by simply asking them. edit: Theres a copy of the paper here. The methodology seems dubious; theyve made no attempt at randomly selecting their population and have apparently used mainly undergrad/graduate students which hardly gives a fair reflection of society (its going to be heavily skewed towards people who are young, middle class, and white). Theyve also solicited their responses by asking the question "Please list all the reasons you can think of why you or someone else you have known has engaged in sexual intercourse in the past" so theres no distinction in the answers between the reasons people have gave for their own sexual practices, and random thinks which they have thought up to 'explain' why they friends are having sex. I really have no idea what the point of this research is meant to be or how it contributes to any wider understanding of sexual behavior; it seems like some yet another postivist sociology study to churn out a journal paper and get a bit of media coverage, but then I'm pretty cynical towards this sort of thing :/ I mean the whole paper boils down to "people have sex for lots of different reasons". |
Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
[quote=Nodrog]I'm not sure how any of the findings are anything other than obvious.[quote]
I found the article interesting to read in the tone seemed to far more surprised than you would probably expect. I also found it to be rather amusing, in a disturbing kind of way. Quote:
Then there are interpretations of feelings. For instance, how do we know that when someone engages in sex to get 'closer to God' they are not following the same feeling as someone else who merely describes it as being 'horney'? Isn't it true that a lot of things are the result of social expectations and therefore many people may not even be aware they are being influenced by it? |
Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
Quote:
|
Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
Quote:
I dont think scientists are entirely blame-free either. Modern academic culture and the emphasis on publication-for-promotion gives academics a strong incentive to talk up their research in order to make themselves look good. I think scientists talking to outsiders (eg media) will often try to make their work sound a lot more ground-breaking than it is for this reason, and journalists are often too uneducated about the relevant literature in order to check. It might not even be conscious deception; most researchers probably believe that what theyre doing has some kind of importance, even when many outsiders would disagree. Also, in the case of social sciences (eg social psychology like this), the modern orientation towards positivism means that there is a strong emphasis on quantitative studies which promotes the kind of trivial research that you linked to, and de-emphasises more potentially interesting qualitiative interpretative research which may not be as easily supportable by data (or at least, not by the sort of 'neat' data you can get by using popular research methods like surveys/psychometric tests/etc). Quote:
|
Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
|
Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
Quote:
The only downside is that I'm not really up on the latest issues of politics (which isn't great as that's my course) but it doesn't seem to have any actual impact that can't be remedied in a short space of time. I'm also surprised to find that my ability to argue hasn't waned in the way I thought it might. Quote:
|
Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
Quote:
I won't rehash the whole argument here, but essentially ther terms "obese" and "overweight" had become freely interchangable in media coverage, when the scientific study kind of said the exact opposite. The program spoke to one of the doctor's on the study who initially defended the coverage but then came back and said that they agreed that the media coverage was bs, etc, etc. From what I could tell, the actual "scientists" weren't really that involved in the specifics of what was being said. Obviously this doesn't absolve them of blame though. Quote:
i) They're better than nothing ii) Even if it's all nonsense, consistent nonsense is still useful on some level. So if you asked a group of thirteen/fourteen year old boys about their sexual experiences, you realise that it's going to be largely nonsense, but if you carried out the same study every year for 50 years you probably would notice some sort of shift (maybe lies getting more ludicrous, I don't know) which might tell you something about sexual attitudes. The problem is that these measures/stats are taken out of context, the "...obviously we realise all this is bullshit" small print is removed and the things are presented as facts in and of themselves. They are then absorbed into debates where they have a real impact on policy making, business decisions, etc. And while this is obvious and even understood by most involved in these processes, it's hard to resist, or to see an obvious cure. Short of some new enlightenment I'm guessing that better/more data and analysis will be what helps in the long run, but I'm also guessing that in the medium term there'll be an endless supply of dodgy surveys to contend with. |
Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
And there was me thinking it was a genetically coded fun thing to do to achieve procreation.
|
Re: Revealed: the real reasons why people have sex
At first I was surprised that "To have something to write about on GD" wasn't mentioned.
Then I remembered that like "Letters to Penthouse" real sex is not a requisite for posting amorous adventures on GD. |
All times are GMT +1. The time now is 20:32. |
Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2002 - 2018