How pervasive are your sexual thoughts?

• Position: YOUR LIFE - Brief article

Men may think about sex more often than women do, but a study suggests they also think about other biological needs, such as eating and sleeping, more frequently than women do as well. Moreover, the research discredits the persistent stereotype that men think about sex every seven seconds, which would amount to more than 8,000u thoughts in 16 waking hours.

In the study, the median number of young men's thoughts about sex stood at almost 19 times per day. Young women in the study reported a median of nearly 10 thoughts about sex per day. As a group, the college-age men also thought about food almost 18 times per day and steep almost 11 times, compared to women's median number of thoughts about eating and sleeping, at nearly 15 times and about eight-and-a-half times, respectively.

"If you had to know one thing about a person to best predict how often he or she would be thinking about sex, you'd be better off knowing the individual's...