The statement is widespread that thoughts about sex are visiting men almost continuously. We decided to check if this is confirmed by scientific data.
The statement about the frequency of the appearance of thoughts about sex in men every seven seconds has become a reason for the appearance memes And Sketches. It is such a time period most often indicate authors of publications in different languages on Internet portals, Reddit and in Facebook*. Tendency of men once in Seven seconds Think about sex Discuss And users of questions and answers. IN others sources It is saidthat men still think about sex a little less often, but still very often-for example, every minute or six times per hour.
Counting the number of human thoughts about any object for a certain period of time is quite problematic. Firstly, every thought as an element of intellectual activity is difficult to fix and separate from another. Secondly, it is even more difficult to identify what is contained in each of them.
Solve the first of these problems in 2020 tried Researchers from the Canadian University of Kuins. Unlike the predecessors who were assigned to the self -reports of volunteers, scientists have chosen a more reliable method. They placed subjects in the MRI Scanner and then showed them different videos, then provided time for rest. So they were able to highlight the phase of the brain when it is focused on one idea (they called this period a mental worm). According to scientists, daily the human brain (provided that it sleeps eight hours) generates and processes about 6,200 thoughts. Already this study refutes the idea that men think about sex every seven seconds. If a man sleeps recommended eight hours a day, then in the remaining 16 hours of wakefulness in his head a little more than 8,000 thoughts about sex should appear, although the average number of thoughts about everything in the world, Canadian researchers found out about a quarter lower.
Determining the content of thought is a more complicated task. In earlier studies, scientists created the average visualization of brain activity zones corresponding to a separate idea. For each of them, such visualization will be unique - for example, thoughts about dinner at home and dinner in a restaurant, even if in both cases a person plans to eat the same dish, will require activity in different zones of the brain. The creation of such visualizations for each thought is a fairly long and expensive process, so today scientists effectively recognize only a limited number of thoughts. Canadian researchers refused this approach. “Our methods help us find when a person thinks about something new, regardless of what kind of new thought it is. We can say that we ignored the vocabulary in an attempt to understand the punctuation of the language of the mind, ” - told One of the authors of the experiment Jordan Poppenk.
Other researchers used less costly methods. In 2012, scientists from the University of Ohio in Mansfield tried Consider how often men and women think about food, dream and sex. The experiment was attended by 283 students-volunteer. During the week they needed to press the hand -meter button every time they were visited by the idea of one of these three things. On average, men thought about sex 19 times a day, and women were only ten. At the same time, they thought about food 18 and 15 times a day, respectively, and about sleep - 11 and nine times. The indicators of the “record holders” are also notable: one of the male participants thought about sex as many as 388 times a day (just more than every two minutes), while the maximum number of thoughts about sex had only 140 (almost seven minutes). The maximum number of thoughts about food was 111 for men and 53 for women, and about a dream - 253 and 57, respectively. Scientists noted that, on the one hand, thoughts about sex, apparently, visit men more often than women. On the other hand, thoughts about basic needs, which include sex, food, sleep, are generally more common among men.
Experts note the limited research design: forcing participants to record thoughts about certain categories, scientists thus realized the “White Bear” effect. An experiment confirming this psychological phenomenon, Spent Researcher Daniel Vegner. Foreign students were divided into two groups: the first participants were asked to specifically think about a white bear, and the participants of the second were forbidden to do this. All subjects were given manual meters - the button on them had to be pressed every time the idea of this animal arose in the head. Students of the second group of thoughts about a white bear arose more often once a minute - the voiced ban stimulated the brain only about the prohibited object. Although in the experiment about thoughts regarding sex, food and sleep, relevant topics were not prohibited, the very task of researchers focus on them could distort the results.
In the same 2012, a group of American scientists Spent Another experiment to understand what people think about during the day. In order not to concentrate the attention of volunteers on certain thoughts in advance, scientists invited them to install an application on the phones, which seven times a day in the accidentally selected moments will ask the question: what they are thinking now or thought over the past 30 minutes. The participants in the study were to attribute their answer to one of the 15 categories. True, scientists were more likely to mean desires-the subjects thought about something distracted, but about hygiene procedures, dreams, sex, cigarettes, sports, reading news, etc. The main restriction of this study was that the participants could report no more than seven thoughts per day, therefore it is impossible to evaluate the frequency of thoughts about sex based on this experiment. However, even among seven sex registered on the day of thought, sex was by no means in the leaders. Most often, people thought about food and dreams, their thoughts were also occupied by non -alcoholic drinks, the use of media and various types of leisure. It turned out to be the most “asexual” time during the day, and the most “sexual” was midnight. In general, the interest in sex was awakened after about 9 o’clock in the evening, but he was usually competition, alcohol, the use of social networks and communication with other people.
Unfortunately, the study does not indicate a breakdown on the thoughts of men and women, however, based on the proportion of participants (66% of women, 34% of men), who constantly think about sex would still change the general results very significantly. In the methodology chosen by researchers there is another significant problem, namely, the issue of frankness of participants. If, for one reason or another, the thought of sex seemed to one of the participants inappropriate, nothing prevented him from noting that in the indicated period of time he thought about something else.
Although scientists are not yet ready to answer the question of how often men attend thoughts about sex, the story of what they think about this every seven seconds can be safely considered a myth. Firstly, as the latest studies show, a person on average per day thinks out less thoughts. Secondly, although men, according to scientists, think about sex more often than women, this topic is by no means the overwhelming part of their mental activity-food and sleep also occupy men very often. Finally, in the life of men, other thoughts and desires play an important role: from time to time they want to sit on social networks, chat with friends, drink alcohol, have fun, and some, of course, and think about the Roman Empire.
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