"Gender Differences in Receptivity to Sexual Offers" should be a screamingly famous research report. Yet most people don’t know about it. Or maybe they can’t believe it exists.
It exists.
Published in 1989 in the Journal of Psychology and Human Sexuality, this nine-page sizzler tells a simple tale. Five women and four men were sent, one at a time, on to a college campus. Each approached strangers of the opposite sex, and said: "I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be very attractive." They then invited the strangers to have sex….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.
(On the University of Hawaii web site of Elaine Hatfield, the co-author of "Gender Differences in Receptivity to Sexual Offers," one can find and download a copy of the paper.)