It turns out Playboy founder Hugh Hefner wasn’t just living out his own fantasy when he surrounded himself with a bevy of young beauties, but the fantasy of every man in the world.
A new study has found that while most men aren’t as open about their sexual desires as Hefner was, many actually share his attraction to younger women. A recent study published in the Evolutionary Psychology Journal by the Department of Psychology at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, set out to discover the minimum and maximum ages men and women would consider when seeking a sexual partner.
While women are more likely to stick to someone of a similar age or slightly older, men, regardless of their age, prefer sexual partners aged in their twenties.
But while they’d prefer a hot young thing in her twenties, men actually aren’t particularly picky when it comes to sexual partners and are open to having sex with women from a variety of different age groups as they get older.
Researchers found that sexual attraction and age preferences developed differently between men and women and noted it could play a role in why these age-ranges are so drastic between the two sexes. As women get older, they are more likely to consider stricter age guidelines that are closer to their actual age, while men continue being attracted to younger women as well as older partners.
The researchers found various characteristics play a role in the differences between men and women. For example, sexual desire tends to decrease as people grow older – particularly in women. It also questioned whether men widening their considered age-range in older age was actually to increase the chance of sexual intimacy.
It also found that homosexual men were more likely to act on their sexual desires with younger partners than their heterosexual counterparts. Heterosexual women with an average age of 34 would consider 27 as the minimum age for a sexual partner and 46 as the maximum. For the participants in the study, 33 was actually the lowest recorded age of a sexual partner and 37 was the maximum.
Meanwhile, men with an average as of 37 would consider sexual partners aged between 21 and 49, while in reality, their sexual partners were aged between 31 and 36.
It should be noted this particular study only took sex into consideration, so romantic interests and factors people consider to long-term partners were not analysed.