Having more sex does not translate into greater happiness, study says

Are those who have more intimate relationships happier? Apparently not.

It is very easy and intuitive to relate the amount of sex you have to the levels of happiness you experience.. It seems common sense to think that sexual satisfaction plays an important role in human psychology and with the degree to which we are content with life; even one of the first referents in the history of psychology, Sigmund Freud, gave human sexuality a leading role in the development of our personality.

Moreover, as we saw in another article, we know that during sexual intercourse several strategic areas of our body begin to emit and 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 evolutionary psychology talks about the origin of many innate psychological characteristics in our species linking their origins to sex!

More sex, more happiness. Are you sure?

However, science is there, among other things, to test the ideas that common sense takes for granted. And, at least in the field of subjective satisfaction with life, it seems that a greater number of sexual relations does not necessarily mean an increase in perceived happiness.. 

This is what a study conducted by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization indicates.

Starting from a simple question

There is quite a bit of research indicating that people who feel happier are also the ones who tend to have more sex than average. This correlation, like almost all correlations, is quite confusing and raises many questions about how perceived happiness and the amount of sex interact: Is it happiness that leads to a more active sex life, or the other way around? Or perhaps there is a third unknown variable that generates both increased levels of happiness and increased frequency of sex?

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University set out to explore the possible causal relationships that might be found between happiness and people's sex lives. Specifically, they sought to answer the question they sought to answer the question of whether or not more sex increases levels of happiness.. And they did it in the crudest way possible: recruiting a certain number of couples and assigning them very specific duties, consisting of doubling the frequency with which they used to make love, for 90 days in a row.

The research was done as follows

Of course, these people were not the only ones who participated in the study. A total of 64 couples were recruited, but only half of them had to increase the amount of sex they had for several months.. The rest were given no sexual instructions whatsoever, as they were to be part of what is known as the control group. control group. All members of the couples, regardless of whether they had to double the frequency of sex or not, had to fill out a series of questionnaires over the course of the three-month data collection phase.

The questions on these questionnaires dealt with perceived levels of happiness, health habits being maintained, and satisfaction with sex.

The results, somewhat disconcerting

The main conclusion drawn from the study was that not only does more sex not lead to greater happiness, but it can actually decrease happiness.. In addition, many of the couples who were to increase the frequency of intercourse became significantly less sexually motivated. Their level of desire had decreased.

Of course, this does not mean that deliberately increasing sexual activity for three months will always negatively affect us: for example, if instead of focusing on quantity, efforts were made to improve the quality of sex, the results could be different.