5 Proven reason from research: Why more intercourse is better for your relationship
By: Team Ifairer | Posted: 12-11-2019
Heart It
"We thought these inconsistencies may stem from the influence of deliberate reasoning and biased beliefs regarding the sometimes taboo topic of sex," Hicks explained. In the study, 216 newlyweds completed survey-style measures of relationship satisfaction. Then, they completed a computer classification task. A word appeared on-screen and they had to press a specific key to indicate whether the word was positive or negative. Before the word appeared, a photo of their partners popped up for a certain duration.
The researchers also asked each partner in the couple to estimate how many times they had had sex in the last four months. The researchers found no association between frequency of sex and self-reported relationship satisfaction. But when they looked at participants' automatic behavioural responses, they saw a different pattern. Estimates of sexual frequency were correlated with participants' automatic attitudes about their partners. That is, the more often couples had sex, the more strongly they associated their partners with positive attributes.Importantly, this finding held for both men and women.