『双语新知』揭秘女性“三十如狼四十似虎”的真相

那么女人呢？如果真的是进化促使男人去拈花惹草，那么是什么影响女人的性欲呢？请看德克萨斯大学的心理学家 DavidBuss以及他的三位毕业生助手（Judith Easton，Jaime Confer and Cari Goetz）7月份发表在Personalityand Individual Differences的一篇文章（以下是摘要）：

Woman in their 30s and early 40s are significantly moresexual than younger women. Women ages 27 through 45 report not onlyhaving more sexual fantasies(and more intense sexual fantasies )thanwoman ages 18 through 26 but also having more sex,period.And they aremore willing than younger women to have casual sex,even  one-nightstands.In oter words ,despite the girls-gone-wild image of promiscuouscollege women,it is women in their middle years who have American’s mostsexuallt industrious.

30岁到40岁出头的女性比更年轻的女性的性欲更强烈。而27到45年龄段的女性比18到26岁的女性不仅拥有更多、更强烈的性幻想，而且拥有更多的性生活以及持续时间。她们比更年轻的女性更愿意拥有偶然的性经历，甚至是一夜情。换句话说，尽管美国人民都觉得大学女生是淫乱放纵的代名词，但事实上中年女性在性方面才是美国最勤勤恳恳的劳模。

Evolution has encouraged women to be more sexually active as theirfertility begins to decline and as menopause approaches.

Here’s how their theory works:Our female ancestors grew accustomed towatching many of their children — perhaps as many as half — die ofvarious diseases, starvation, warfare and so on before being able tohave kids of their own. This trauma left a psychological imprint to bearas many children as possible. Becoming pregnant is much easier forwomen and girls in their teens and early 20s — so much easier that theyneed not spend much time having sex.

However, after the mid-20s, the lizard-brain impulse to have morekids faces a stark reality: it’s harder and harder to get pregnant as awoman’s remaining eggs age. And so women in their middle years respondby seeking more and more sex.

进化同样促使女性去寻求更多的性行为，因为她们的生育力开始下降，并且她们即将进入更年期。

以下是他们的理论：由于各种疾病、饥饿、战争等因素，古代女性已经习惯了自己的孩子里可能多达半数都会夭折的现实，这一心理创伤使得她们对下一代抱着越多越好的态度。当她们还只有十几二十岁的时候，即使做爱次数有限，她们还是很容易怀孕。

但过了25岁，她们求子的本能就遭到了挑战。随着年龄的增加，女性卵子受孕的机会也越来越小。因此中年妇女对性爱的渴求也就水涨船高。

To test this theory, Buss and hisstudents asked 827 women to complete questionnaires about their sexualhabits. And, indeed, they found that women who had passed their peakfertility years but not quite reached menopause were the most sexuallyactive.    Both partnered and single women, meaning that married womenin their 30s and early 40s tend to have more sex than married women intheir early 20s; ditto for single women. Also, whether the women weremothers didn’t matter. Only age had a strong affect on women’s reportedsexual interest and behavior.

为了测试这个理论,巴斯和他的学生对827位女性进行了关于性习惯的调查问卷。而且,事实上,他们发现那些已经过了生育峰值,但并不完全达到更年期的妇女的性行为最为活跃。对于单身女性和已婚妇女来说，30岁和40岁出头的已婚妇女比二十出头的已婚女性拥有更多的性生活。同样,这与女性是否已为人母没有关系。只有年龄才对女性的性兴趣和性行为有着强烈的影响。

And yet there are a few flaws with the data in the new paper.Chiefly: some three-quarters of the participants in the study wererecruited on Craigslist, a website where many go to seek hookups,meaning there was a self-selection problem with the sample. (The otherparticipants were students at the University of Texas in Austin.) Theauthors also note that there are some alternative explanations for whywomen in their 30s and early 40s might be more sexual. Many of them maysimply be more comfortable with sex than women in their teens and early20s. Still, that raises the question of why they are more comfortable:perhaps evolution programmed that comfort.

然而这篇文章中的一些数据还是存在着一些缺陷。主要是:研究中大约有四分之三的参与者都从Craigslist（一个许多人会去寻找连接的网站）上招募而来的，这就很难保证样本的多样性(其他参与者都是来自于德州大学奥斯丁学院的学生)。作者也指出还有一些别的解释为什么女人”三十如狼，四十似虎“。跟十几岁到二十出头的女性比起来，他们中的许多人可能只是简单地想要更舒适的性罢了。然而,这提出了一个问题,为什么他们会想要更舒服些呢:也许是因为对舒适需求的进化程序所造成的。