do men really have more partners than women?

How many sexual partners have you had?
If this were an actual survey, would you lie about it?
The discussion often comes up during the beginning stages of dating,
and apparently a lot of people are lying about their numbers.

When it comes to opposite-sex partners, the numbers in research aren’t adding up.
Mathematicians say the average count for each gender should be the same,
yet most surveys out of countries like the U.S. and the U.K. find men
are reporting two to four times as many sex partners as women do!

A 2005 study conducted by psychology professor Dr. Norman Brown found
that men tend to overestimate the number of sexual partners they’ve had.
They misrepresent themselves in simply using a rough approximation method.

Women, on the other hand, are likelier to actually stop and think about
individual sexual incidences to figure out their own tally.
In general, women know exactly how many men they’ve been with,
and can typically name names.

However, the approximation strategy men use is known to result in overestimation.
Brown’s study, by the way, found that the average number of sexual partners
for U.S. heterosexuals, mostly in their late 40s, was 8.6 for women and 31.9 for men.