237 reasons to have sex

Seen on 'Short Sharp Science' a recent study has been asking people why they have sex and they have produced a definitive list of 237 reasons. Yes, there are apparently more than the two reasons of "too have fun" and "to make babies". Entire academic article available here.

So extracted from the table of top 50 reasons to have sex for men and women:

M & F: 1. I was attracted to the person.

F: 9, M: 17. I realised I was in love.

F: 39, M:Not in top 50. The person was intelligent.

F: 2, M:3. I wanted to experience the physical pleasure.

F34, M:16. The person had a desirable body.

M & F:7. I was 'horny'.

Going over the table some stereotypes are reinforced but it is also obvious that men and women aren't that different after all. On the scoring side of things men gave higher scores than women suggesting perhaps that women had a wider variety of reasons for having sex where as men have more narrow reasons.

I thought it was all so simple, I wonder if anyone did it for love. The authors of the article then went on to identify four large factors and 13 sub factors.

It all sounds rather interesting, I hope new Scientist do a more detailed article on it at some point which might be a bit more easy going for us non academic researchers.

I have a question though, Can someone fund a study to find out whether more sex goes on at sex psychology conferences than other similar conferences.

The article does not state whether the authors had sex and for what reasons. Perhaps the over analysis of the reasons for having sex put them off the idea and they decided to read a good book instead.