Sensation seeking and malesʹ sexual strategy

We examined the relationship between sensation seeking and the self-reports of both sexual interests and behaviours of 162 heterosexual male students and 60 heterosexual males recruited from the community. Because parental investment theory and previous research suggest that malesʹ interest in sexual partner variety is constrained by femalesʹ preference for committed sexual relationships, we predicted that participants would desire to have more partners in the future than they have had in the past. Because evolutionary theory and previous research also suggests that personality dispositions are related to mating strategies, we further predicted that sensation seeking would be positively correlated with lifetime number of sexual partners, mean number of partners per sexually active year, shortest time a partner was known before having sex, the percentage of previous relationships that were short-term, number of partners desired in the next year, and variety of sexual activities participants had experienced or would like to experience, and negatively correlated with age at first intercourse. The predictions were supported.