New research has challenged previous notions regarding why men and women choose to masturbate beyond the obvious desire for self-pleasure, unveiling new psychological explanations behind a desire for the act.
Masturbation is both a common and healthy habit among both men and women, although there are some intriguing effects that abstaining from the activity can cause, supported with concrete evidence from health experts.
Whether the activity has grown in popularity in the last few decades is hard to properly quantify, although there has notably been an increase in people willing to admit or discuss their masturbation habits — particularly among women.
This has a lot to do with the destigmatization of self-pleasure, although some might also link it to the increased availability of adult content online that could arguably make the habit easier to indulge in for some.
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What has continued to be an intriguing topic for scientists, however, is the perceived motivational differences in men and women when it comes to masturbation, and a new study has challenged past conclusions by presenting new evidence that offers a more shared experience.
Published in The Journal of Sex Research, a study led by the University of Oslo's Nantje Fischer anaylzes trends in masturbation habits by sourcing data from repeat cross-sectional probability sample surveys dating back to 1999-2001 and 2010-2012.
Psychologists previously consider masturbation to have a 'complementary' function for women and a 'compensatory' function for men, implying that men used self-pleasure to compensate for an inactive sex life whereas the habits of women increased with regular intercourse.
While the data from the surveys has echoed this slightly, with higher intercourse rates amongst men translating to lower masturbation frequency and vice versa for women, further analysis has challenged the notion by presenting commonalities.
"Women and men reporting masturbation the past month were more likely to report: preference for more frequent intercourse; discrepant sexual interest with a partner; dissatisfaction or distress/worry about their sex life; or sexual difficulties or a partner with sexual difficulties."
This indicates that both women and men are driven to or likely to experience higher rates of masturbation in correlation with lower intercourse rates for a number of reasons, indicating that both are linked to compensatory functions.
"When partnered sexuality faces challenges, masturbation may serve as a replacement for both men and women," the study concludes.
It also asserts that masturbation habits in general have increased over the last few habits, or at least people are more willing to disclose their own participation in self pleasure.
"There was a statistically significant increase in the prevalence of reported masturbation in the past month (from 37% to 40.3% in women and from 73.4% to 77.5% in men) between 1999 and 2001 and 2010-12," the study outlines.
This is likely due to a number of factors in play, but the conclusion of increased reliance on masturbation as a reflection of sexual activity could perhaps signal a larger role at play.