Men think about sex every seven seconds, right? Not according to a new study that finds men ponder sleep and food as much as they do sex。

　　The median number of thoughts about sex by college-age men was 18 times a day to women's 10 times a day, the study found. But the men also thought about food and sleep proportionately more。

　　"In other words, there was nothing special about sexual thoughts," said study researcher Terri Fisher, a psychologist at The Ohio State University. "Males thought more about any of the health-related thoughts compared to females, not just thoughts about sex."

　　Fisher and her colleagues asked 163 college women and 120 college men about health-related thoughts. The researchers told 60 percent of the students to click the counter whenever they thought about sex. Others were instructed to tally their thoughts on food and sleep。

　　"The stereotype is that men think about sex constantly and women rarely," Fisher said. But that's not what she and her colleagues found. There was a broad range in the number of sex thoughts, from several participants who recorded one thought a day, to a male participant who recorded 388 thoughts in a day. Factoring in the participant's sleep time, his 388 thoughts broke down to having a sexual thought every 158 seconds, still far fewer than the "every seven seconds" legend would suggest。

　　On average, the men in the study thought about sex slightly more than once each waking hour and women about half that. However, men paid no greater attention to sex than they did food and sleep, Fisher found。

　　"There are stereotypes about women and sexuality and about women and food," Fisher said, and women who indicated on questionnaires that they cared more about what others thought about them were less likely to report food and sex-based thoughts. The finding suggests that women, but not men, are influenced by social desirability concerns in what they were thinking or what they would admit to thinking。

　　"When people hear about some of these differences, I think sometimes they don't question it because it fits the stereotypes we have of men and women," Fisher said. "When you stop and take a closer look at the origins of some of these alleged differences, they sometimes have no empirical support."

　　男人每隔7秒就会想到性，是不是？然而最新研究结果证明并非如此，因为男人除了性，还常常想睡、想吃。

　　研究发现，高校男生每日想到性的平均次数是18次，而女生是10次。但男生想吃和想睡的次数也同比例地高出女生许多。

　　“换句话说，想到性也不是什么大不了的事，”俄亥俄州立大学心理学家、研究员Terri Fisher说道。“就健康相关的问题，男人比女人想得更频繁，这不仅限于性。”

　　Fisher和同事就健康相关问题调查了163个高校女生和120个男生。其中60%的人被告知一旦想到性就在柜台上敲一下。其他人则只需将自己关于食物和睡觉的想法标记下来。

　　“我们原以为男生会很常想到性，而女生很少，”Fisher说道。但她和同事并没有发现这一点。学生们想到性的次数变化幅度很大，从一天一次到某男生的一天388次。把该男生的睡眠时间考虑进去，他的那388次也只能被算为每158秒钟想一次，远没有传说中的“7秒钟一次”那么夸张。

　　一般而言，在该研究中，男生在醒着的每一个小时内想到性的次数之比一次多一点，而女生则是半次。

　　“人们对于女性、性、食物的关系总有一套固定看法，”Fisher说道，而通过问卷可以看到，那些更加关心别人看法的女性不大容易表达出跟食物和性有关的真实态度。研究发现，在想法或者说是他们愿意承认的想法上，女人，而非男人，受到了社会意愿的影响。

　　“当人们听到一些不对劲的地方，我想有时他们并不去质疑，因为这些不对劲和我们对男人和女人的传统看法一致，”Fisher说道。“当你停下来仔细查看这些所谓的差异的根源，就会发现它们有时毫无经验依据可言。”