Hooking Up? Then You’re Probably Hooking Up.

PHOTO: Michael Newman.

Speaking of obvious research results, the New York Times posted a piece yesterday highlighting a new sex study from the University of Iowa that concluded the following:

...compared with those in serious relationships, people hooking up with a stranger or acquaintance and lovers in “friends with benefits” arrangements are much more likely to sleep around simultaneously.

...it may be that the people who are likely to enter non-serious sexual relationships are predisposed to be non-exclusive — not that the nature of the relationship itself causes non-monogamy.

In other words, what we seem to have here is a study showing that people who are having casual sex do it because they like it, and are likely to be having quite a bit of it.

For me, the money question is not so much “WHY, SCIENCE? WHY?” but “Why did you go and use old data—collected in 1995, apparently—for this seminal (heh) study?” Maybe it’s just me, but I think work of this significance warrants fresh data.