Looks drive casual sex, study finds

In a report that should surprise no one, University of Ottawa researchers have determined women have one-night stands for the sex.

In a survey of 510 mostly Canadian women, “the person’s physical appearance turned me on” was rated as the No. 1 reason heterosexual respondents had opted for casual sex.

Although women in committed relationships reported having sex as an expression of love or affection, casual sex was almost purely physical. The No. 2 and No. 3 reasons for casual sex, respectively, were “It feels good” and “I was ‘horny.’ ”

“To my knowledge, this is the first study to specifically compare physical and emotional reasons for casual sex,” study co-author Heather Armstrong said in an email to Postmedia News.

Emotional closeness barely even made the list. As per the survey, women are more likely to have casual sex because a man had “beautiful eyes” and “smelled nice,” rather than doing it because they wanted to feel intimate.

The study’s stated goal was to “explore women’s motivations to have sex” — whether it be straight sex, gay sex, casual sex or sex with a spouse.

“As expected, women reported more physical motivations for casual sex and more emotional motivations for sex in a committed relationship,” the study read.

Namely, committed women were far more likely to have sex with their partners to “show my affection,” “communicate at a ‘deeper’ level” or solidify “the natural next step in my relationship.”

However, even in marriages and long-term courtships, “it feels good” still held the No. 1 spot as to why a heterosexual woman would take her partner to bed. Recruited mostly from a “large, urban university in eastern Canada,” the study’s 510 subjects were 78 per cent Caucasian, mostly non-religious and had a mean age of 21.6 years.

In recent decades, the science of casual sex has been informed heavily by a 1989 study out of the United States. Prepared by researchers Russell Clark and Elaine Hatfield, the study recruited men and women on U.S. university campuses and asked them to approach classmates with random propositions for sex.

Of the men approached by female participants, an incredible 69 per cent agreed. By contrast, not a single woman assented to a man’s random request to “go to bed with me tonight?”