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Brits most promiscuous

By Carla Bevan on Monday 1 December 2008

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Marie Claire Features: Man, Sex

The British enjoy more one-night stands than nearly every other large Western nation.

Researchers have discovered that us Brits are more promiscuous than the French, the Dutch, Americans, Australians, Italians and more.

Why? Well, apparently it's mainly down to how society in this country has more liberal views when it comes to women sleeping with multiple partners.

'Historically we have repressed women's short-term mating and there are all sorts of double standards out there where men's short-term mating was sort of acceptable but women's wasn't,' David Schmitt of Bradley University, Illinois, tells New Scientist.

As part of his team's 'sociosexuality' index, more than 14,000 individuals in 48 countries were polled on their sexual habits, with each nation then given an index of how sexually liberal its population was.

In the final tally, Britain came 11th, ahead of the countries listed above, but below Latvia, Croatia, Slovenia and, in first place, Finland.

Links were drawn between the ratio of women to men in countries which took part with those Balkan states which scored highly on the index often having more women than men, forcing women to conform to male ideals. In Asia, in contrast, where there are more men than women, the opposite is true, with men having to conform.

Other interesting discoveries during the research included the fact that women are more likely to entertain the idea of a one-night stands during fertile peaks, but that while men enjoy more one-night stands in their twenties, women prefer to wait until their thirties.