Justin Lehmiller || The Science of Sexual Fantasies

Doctor lay Miller is a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and author of the book Tell Me What You Want, The Science of Sexual Desire and How it can help You improve your sex life. Ley Miller is an award winning educator, having been honored three times with the Certificate of Teaching Excellence from Harvard University, where he taught for several years. He's also a prolific researcher and scholar who has published more than forty pieces of academic writing to date,

including a textbook entitled The Psychology of Human Sexuality. Hey, thanks for chatting with me today, Justin. Hey, thanks for having me. Scott. What a topic. This is something we really haven't represented as fully in the podcast and really trying to kind of expand the depths of humanity that

we cover on this podcast and understanding of that. Let's start with Freud, because everything always starts with Freud, right, and then we criticize it, and then we say what he got wrong, and then we say the way to science is So, what did Freud have to say about sexual fantasy and desire? Did he have anything to say on that topic? Freud had a lot to say about sex and a lot to say about fantasies too, And his main conclusion was basically that a happy person never fantasizes,

only a dissatisfied one. So Freud's view of sexual fantasies was really that they're usually always a sign of deeper psychological troubles that a person has. He said the same thing about daydreaming. Yeah, maybe daydreaming is associated with sexual I don't know, it'd be interesting to anyway. That's a whole other research topic. But okay, so tell me about the methodology that you employed for what you referred to as the largest survey of sexual fantasies in America? Now,

is that of all time? As far as I know, Yes, there are larger sex surveys that exist, but none that have focused specifically on sexual fantasies and that have approached it in a way that's as comprehensive as I did. So what I did for this book was I surveyed almost forty two hundred Americans who came from all fifty states, ranged in age from eighteen to eighty seven, come from

all different religious, political, and demographic backgrounds. And they completed a survey that contained three hundred and sixty nine questions, and it started with what is your biggest sexual fantasy of all time? People wrote that out in narrative form. I also had them sum it up in one word, which I thought was really interesting because I could then create a word cloud to look at one of the

most popular themes that appear in people's fantasies. And then I asked them hundreds of questions about people, places, things it ever fantasized about, along with detailed information on their personalities, their sexual histories, their demographic backgrounds. So, as far as I know, it is the largest most comprehensive look at sexual fantasies to date. Well, congratulations, that's not easily getting that many participants. For anything. So did you use online surveys?

Is that what you did? Or I mean you didn't, like bring every single one into a laboratory. Oh no, And I wouldn't have had the funding to be able to do that. As you probably know, there's not a lot of funding for psychology research in general, but specifically on sex and sexual fantasies. There's almost no money to do it. So this was an online survey I largely recruited through social media, and it was advertised as a

survey of sexual fantasies. It took about a half hour more so to complete on average, and it took me close to two years to collect all these data. Wow, well, what an accomplishment. So you got a lot of very interesting data out of it. So let's dive into some of this. What are the seven most common sexual fantasies in America? Why don't we just jump into the deep end? Okay? Sure? So I found that there were three fantasies that almost

everyone who took the survey reported having. The most popular was multi partner sex, so just having sex with multiple people at once. Most commonly that was in the form of a threesome, but some people fantasized about larger groups. Very close in popularity was BDSM fantasies bondage, domination, submission, sadism, masochism, ranging from mild to wild, but most commonly taking more mild forms like spankings and tying your partner up, things

like that. And then the third category that almost everyone reported was what I call novelty, adventure and variety. So that was basically just trying something that's new and different for you. That could be a new position or having sex in a new place or setting. So that means something a little different to everyone, because what's new for you might not be very new to someone else. There

were also four other fantasies I found. There were very popular themes, not quite as popular as the three I just mentioned, but these were taboo and forbidden sexual activities, so breaking social or cultural norms for what's acceptable when it comes to sex. Fantasies about passion and romance, so basically meeting your deeper emotional needs. Also fantasies about same sex activities and what I call gender bending, where basically people are sort of pushing the boundaries of their gender

role or identity or expression. And then the other category fantasies was what I call non monogamy, so basically being in some type of sexually open relationship, not necessarily having group sex, but maybe for example, being polyamorous or trying swinging or something along those lines. So that covers quite a range of things. Would you say that for most of these are the general outlines, you didn't like go

into great detail in the book. You do go into some specific detail about some of the more extreme things and the specifics of it in general. Would you say that most of these fantasies, while like even the taboo ones, they're not necessarily illegal. What are some taboo things that most people do? And what is actually what kind of taboo stuff is actually more minor more rare in the

general population. Sure, So the taboo fantasy category is interesting in that some of the fantasies that were very popular or very common would actually be illegal if people were to act them out. So voyeurism was actually one of the most popular taboo fantasies, where people are spying on someone else who is unsuspecting or unknowing while they're undressing

or having sex. It seems that a lot of people, men and women are like find that to be sexually arousing, and that doesn't mean that they necessarily want to do it in real life. So I think there's an important distinction we need to make between having a fantasy and in having a desire. So people can fantasize be turned on about something, but not necessarily want to do it because they realized, hey, that would be illegal or non

consensual and I shouldn't do that. So that seems to be a common thread to runk through your entire book. Actually is a different between and actuality. So some people can have these fantasies and it doesn't necessarily mean that they are a horrible person. Is that right? Like I feel like a lot of this book is like to reduce shame around a lot of these fans. Is that right? Right?

And it turns out that a lot of us have dark and dev and fantasies from time to time, and it seems like it's normal to have those fantasies, and it's not a sign of psychopathology. It's not a sign that you're on the route to becoming a sex offender or something along those lines. It's really only when you have these jark devan fantasies all the time and that becomes your preferred fantasy content, that it starts to represent

a problem and that is rare. So a lot of people will have devy and fantasies, you know, occasionally, but when it becomes the preferred fantasy content, that's a very different thing. That's a really important distinction, it seems. And also the point you're making that we shouldn't really judge people by the content of their fantasies necessarily, right, Like, you know, the whole phase judges by the content of

the character. Like what I'm trying to say is it seems like you're saying, like, don't judge the content of the character by the content of their sexual fantasies. Right, And that's where it's first time I ever phrased it like that. But yeah, that's where it's useful to make the distinction between having the fantasy and then wanting to act on it or actually acting on it, because that is a very different thing than just having the thought

pop into your head. Sometimes we have fantasies that pop into our heads simply because we have very active imaginations. I find that people who score high on this measure that's called having a fantasy prone personality, which basically means

you daydream a lot, you fantasize a lot. People who are high in this fantasy prone personality fantasize more about everything, whether it's conventional or unconventional, and that doesn't necessarily mean that there's anything deeper to it beyond just that they have a lot of thoughts that pop into their head.

So this is what's something I found interesting because it seems like there's a kind of a general I always like to think of, like generalized principles and stuff, and it seems like sexual self actualization is really important for well being. This is something I gathered from your book as well, that it seems like the more the people have these fantasies and kind of keep them in their head, the more taboo it becomes, the more guilt written it becomes.

But if they can find safe, obviously consensual ways of expressing it, you say, most people actually report when they actually express their fantasies, they're like, wow, that was awesome, right. Yeah. So, one really interesting thing I found was that when I asked people how common they thought their sexual fantasies are, most people thought that they were rarer in the population

than they really are. And that's a big part of where all of this shame comes from, is that people think they're weird or abnormal or unusual for having the fantasies that they do. And when they start feeling guilty or ashamed of their fantasies, then they tend to keep them to themselves rather than sharing them with their partners. But what I find is that that when people start to express those fantasies, share them with a partner. This doesn't necessarily mean act on them, but just having that

open communication with a partner about fantasy and desire. What you find is that, for the most part, people report positive outcomes. They report that it actually improved their relationship to be able to talk about these fantasies with their partners. So there's a lot of potential benefits we stand to gain by having more open communication about our fantasies rather than just keeping them to ourselves and having all of this pent up guilt and shame that goes along with them.

What individual differences factors did you find We're most predictive of feeling guilt over your sexual fantasies. Oh, that's a good question. Can you write about Republicans how they have a lot of guilt. Yeah, so certainly there were some political and religious undertones there. So for people who have more political and moral restrictions placed upon them, they do tend to feel more guilty about their sexual fantasies no matter what they are. There's also an interesting gender difference.

I find that men feel more guilt about their sexual fantasies than women, And to me, that was really surprising because we live in this society that is very judgmental of women just for being desirous of sex. So you might expect that women on average would feel more guilty about their sex fantasies, but that's not what I found. I found that men felt a lot more guilt than

women did. Part of that might stem from the fact that men report having more taboo sexual fantasies than women, So maybe that's where some of the guilt stems from. But you know, we see some interesting political, religious, and gender differences there in those feelings of guilt. Do you think that the Me too movement actually might explain some of this as well, where men are now being overly cautious. I should note that these data were collected before the

Me Too movement really kick. So these data were collected towards the end of the second Obama administration, So how it would relate to Me Too, You know, I can't necessarily say based on the timing of data collection, but I do think that they're an interesting point to be made there, that there might be some linkages there that could be contributing to further shame and guilt about sex fantasies. In one area in particular, where that might happen would

be in the case of forced sex fantasies. I found and wrote about this extensively in the book, that a lot of men and women fantasize about being taken against their will. So amidst the current backdrop of Me Too, where we're talking about rape and sexual assault, how people might feel about those sex fantasies might be very different

today compared to when the data were collected. I've always found that data interesting about the prevalence of these kinds of fantasies, And when you look deeper into it, it it does seem as though the content of fantasy is more of like controlled rape in a sense, like you're the one actually in control, Like it's not the fantasy is not actually about non consensual rape, but it seems to be in my reading of the literature, more about a desire to kind of someone wants you so bad you

know that there's kind of this old writing passion where you feel wanted in a sense. Is there something to that, Yeah, And I think that's part of the reason why some people refer to these fantasies as consensual non consent yeah, because I think ultimately what this is really about is sort of a take on dominance submission play or yes, the other person wants you so badly, and there's that element of dominant submission, but ultimately, in the fantasy, you

are still in control. You're still dictating the terms under which this encounter happens. So that's varied from a rape or sexual assault that happens in the real world, where the victim is not in all of the situation there, it really seems. So let's talk about some other sex differences. But in order to do that, I think there's an important distinction I made here between sexual orientation and sexual flexibility.

Can you just describe the difference between the two? Sure, So I talked about this a bit in the book. Your sexual orientation is really what orients you toward persons of whether you're hetero, homosexual, bisexual. So the orientation is really more about who you're attracted to, and the flexibility portion is more about your willingness to deviate from sexual norms and also deviate from the orientation as well to

try new things and have new partners and experiences. So you found that women tend to have more flexible sexuality, is that right? Right? And in a lot of different types of ways. Women were more flexible with respect to the agenda of their partners. So, for example, women who identified as exclusively heterosexual reported more same sex fantasies than men who identified as exclusively heterosexual. There were other areas where we see women's greater flexibility coming out, for example

and having more BDSM fantasies across the board. That was one of the things I found really interesting was that women reported more BDSM fantasies of almost every type, whether it was taking on a statistic role or a masochistic role, or a dominance smissic role. Women are reporting more of these fantasies than we're men. So that's an interesting finding.

You know, let's talk about BDSM for a second. Because it's a topic not talked about that frequently in ployee company, in society, right, because there's a taboo against it, which obviously is probably part of the more of it for a lot of people. You know, that's the point, you know, I guess. But there is this kind of notion that you must be mentally ill if you have BDS and phtis or you act out BDSM, that if you like the sadism aspect of BDSM, that you're a satist in

real life. Right, is that necessarily true? Does your data challenge any of these just widely held stereotypes. Yeah, My data and the data of other researchers looking at people who are interested in BDSM finds that they are not poorly adjusted psychologically. They are not necessarily victims of sexual

abuse either. That's the popular stereotype that is reinforced by depictions like fifty Shades of Gray, which seem to suggest that if you're into BDSM, that you come from this troubled history in past and that you're messed up fifty shades of messed up expression I've heard. So, Yeah, the

data doesn't really seem to support that idea. One interesting thing I did find though, was that for people who had BDSM fantasies and who had acted on them, they reported better psychological adjustment than people who had BDSM fantasies but had kept them to themselves. It's something that's true more generally with our fantasies, which is when we keep them secret and hide them and we feel guilt and

shame about them, that can be psychologically damaging. But when we come to accept them as part of who we are, then we can come to feel better about ourselves. Yeah, and that's a common like we were just talking about, that's a common generalizable theme across all of this. I want to quote you the sentence you said, because I think the sentence out of context could be potentially very controversial. I'd like to explain elaborate on it a little bit.

It could also be that women's greater interest in BDSM might have something to do with the idea that women are more likely than men to fantasize about being the object of desire. What do you mean by the do you mean being objectified? What do you mean so in their fantasies we see a gender being very careful here in your answer, I can tell you be very careful, yes, and I think it's a topic that requires it requires sensitivity, yeah,

it appreciate. So in fantasies we see this gender difference where it ties in with another finding I had, which is that men place more emphasis on who they were

having sex with than women. So for men, it was more important by a specific person in mind, and I think it's because men see themselves as acting on They tend to see themselves as acting on an object of desire, so having a specific person in mind is more important, whereas women in their fantasies see themselves more as the object of desire, and so for them the specific partner they have isn't quite as important because they are more

the center of attention in their sexual fantasy. Now, I think the interesting question is where does that come from. Why do we difference in men and women with, you know, in terms of being the object of desire or acting on the object of desire. And I don't know that we know the answer to that. It could be there could be a cultural explanation there, because women are more sexually objectified in our culture, and maybe that creeps into

our sexual fantasies in a way. The other thing that's worth mentioning here is that most people have a lot of different fantasies. I guess one of the questions that might help to address this too would be is it someone's favorite fantasy? Is this what they're always going back to, or is it just a fantasy that they have had,

simply have had before that's popped into their head. And there could be some variability there where maybe most of the time they fantasize about being more in that sexual object role versus you know, maybe just occasionally they fantasize about being the person who's acting on the object desire. Do you ever get shy talking about some of those topics?

Do I get shy talking about it? No? But I do get hesitant and talking about some of these topics just because I know how controversial and delicate some of them are. And this is something that someone who's been teaching human sexuality courses for more than a decade, that I'm very cognizant of, and that a lot of my colleagues don't quite realize. I think some of them look at me and they think, oh, he got high evaluations

for teaching a human sexuality course. But that's because sex, you know, everybody wants to take a sex course, and sex is easy, but that everything you say in a human sexuality course is a potential mindfield where you have the potential to offend someone who might have a different

view or different identity. So this is one area where you have to be so so careful in how you phrase and talk about every point justin I completely agree with that, and I hope that listeners to this podcast will think that we're being sensitive, and I'm sure they let us know if we're not. But I really think that you know, there's a sensitivity, but also you want to say the truth. Do you want to be authentic

in what you found? Now? Do you give trigger warnings when you teach certain topics in the course, like when you cover the topic of rape fantasies? I mean, my gosh, that seems like a potential. If anything's going to have a trigger warning associated with it, it it would be that

what's your thinking on that? Yeah, So I have given a general copyat at the beginning of every semester when I teach a human sexuality course to say, you know, this is a course about sex, and we're going to talk about things that might upset you or might offend you, and you have to be aware of that going in. But I'm not going to excuse students from learning about certain material if they're worried about how it might offend them.

We need to be open to hearing about data and ideas and theories that might challenge us personally on a lot of levels. We can't always just get up and leave whenever a topic makes us uncomfortable, and I think that's where we run into a lot of problems, is when we just cover our ears and we don't want to hear about things that are potentially upsetting. Yeah, good, Okay,

so we can just end. I think we can end the discussion of sex differences by emphasizing the point that men and women really do tend to fantasize about the same things. The main difference is in the frequency with which they have a given type of fantasy. Is that right, right? Yeah? So I found that there was a lot more commonality in the things that men and women were fantasizing about

than you might expect. So men, for example, had a lot more emotional content in their fantasies than previous research would have suggested, and women's sexual fantasies were more adventurous than previous research would have suggested. For the most part, we're all fantasizing about the same things. But for example, men do fantasize a little bit more about the reasons, women do fantasize a little bit more about emotional connection with the partner. But for the most part, we're fantasizing

about the same things. Good. That's a really good point. And there was like an interesting book called it was a Thousand Wicked Thoughts or something like that, A billion a billion, And something that struck me in reading that is that, like some topics, it's like people like getting as close as they canded taboo without crossing a line. So for instance, like step father pornography is really popular, but it's not like actual father pornography is Papa, but stepfather,

you know, is there something to that? Yeah, so you know, there's actually a bonus chapter for the book that goes in Yeah, it goes into a lot more detail about these taboo fantasies, and I do talk about incest fantasies in there. I also talk about free fantasies, you know, people who like to dress up as an animal to have sex. I cover all of the sort of less common sexual desires there. But I think a big part of what draws people to the taboo is basically just

that it interjects this form of novelty. You know that it's something you're not supposed to do, and when you're told that you can't do something, that often makes you want to do it even more. It's the classic reverse psychology. So there's a bit of that reactance that's going on, and there's just that sort of heightened level of excitement that comes along with doing something or thinking about something that you're not supposed to do or want. So certain

people are more drawn to the taboo. Those people would be high in the trade of sexual sensation seeking, where they just have a higher threshold for stimulation. So if you're one of those sensation seekers, you might be more drawn to the taboo just for that reason. Yeah, I think that's really sensible answer. You know, this book could just be extraordinarily eye opening to a lot of people who have been feeling a lot of guilt over their fantasies.

Also a lot of you know, religious people, people who've grown up in religious backgrounds where they were taught that even just thinking about sex no matter what kind of sex is really bad. It's eye opening at a really deeply profound level. Though, I feel like at even a more profound level than even the points you make in the book explicitly, because are you telling me that, like most people like we meet every day in our life, have a lot of freaky fantasies going on in their head,

like we don't know about. Like I mean, when you actually get to the truth of the matter of the world. Isn't that like a bit like incredible little two eye opening? Yeah, I mean, it depends on your person, you know what I mean. But I think you know. One of the takeaways from what I found through this research is basically that you know, what would be unusual would be if

you only fantasized about very conventional sexual activities. You know, if your fantasy was only ever having penile vaginal intercourse with a spouse and a monogamous marriage in your own bed, you know, every night, you know, for the rest of your life. If that was your only sexual fantasy ever, that would be pretty unusual. It seems to be normative for people to be a bit kinky when it comes

to their fantasies. Wow, so most people when they fantasize, they're not fantasizing about like kissing the person, like really affectionate, loving, and then normal the knella sex. Well, I mean that is certainly a part of people's fantasies. Affection is a big part of people's fantasies because people are often trying to meet emotional needs through their sexual fantasies. You know, I wouldn't say that that is weird or unusual in

any way. My point was just that if that's the only thing you ever fantasized about, according to my day, that would be uncommon. I see, this is so interesting. That's why we need the science, right Like, thank goodness you came along and did this largest survey ever in the history of the world, so we know the truth. But of course the truth is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable, right sure. And there's a lot in this book that I expect that will be controversial,

you know. For we talked about the four sex fantasies and how common they are being one of them. We talked about some of the gender differences being another Another area is that you know, I see differences between Republicans and Democrats and the sexual fantasies that they have, with the Republicans having more taboo fantasies than Democrats. So I think, looking at across the board, there's a lot of controversial stuff in here, So let's not stop there. Let's keep

going on. So what do your sexual fantasy say about you? Now? You ask fifteen questions? Obviously I don't think we have time for you to go through all fifteen. Maybe how about I pick out some of the most delicious ones to me. Let's start with age, because there's something surprising there with age. Some people may think that younger might be kinkier or not, but that's not necessarily case, right, right, So as people get older, they seem to become more

sexually adventurous in a lot of ways. So I found that there's a correlation between age and fantasies about non monogamy and group sex. So the older people get, the more likely they are to have, say, threesome fantasies or to fantasize about being in an open relationship. Interestingly, though, it's actually a curb linear relationship, meaning that interest in those activities increases up to about age forty stays high through the mid fifties or so and then starts to

decline again. And I think what's going on there is basically that as people are getting older and they enter long term relationships, most people end up in monogamous marriages that they're just looking for ways to spice up their sex lives. But then as they get older and enter their retirement years, their sexual needs and desires sort of change and adjust. So I think there's actually this whole developmental time course of sexual fantasies that some I want

to explore some future research. Totally, it makes complete sense from a novelty dopamine perspective, Like when you're eighteen, what's taboo to you is just having sex, like you know, because you haven't done too much. Most people haven't done too much of it by eighteen, but by the time you're like sixty, you've done probably a lot. Yeah, yeah, So it makes so much sense that you're going to ramp up the dope mean system of what gets you

it turned on. So you only stopped with eighty seven year olds, Like what if you studied ninety seven year olds, they could be the kinkest of them all. How you don't know that you haven't studied it, I haven't you know, there are limitations of data based on age. Also, you know another limitation I should point out is that, you know, I did focus on American sexual fantasies. I didn't really look at people in different cultures. And I think that's

another interesting direction worth exploring in the future. Is how fantasies vary cross culturally. Absolutely lots of interesting new hypotheses and things. So how you feel about your current relationship, how does that relate it? Yeah, so I found that people who are more satisfied in their relationships fantasized more about their current romantic partners. People who were dissatisfied fantasized

more about celebrities and porn stars and other people. I think this makes sense, and it actually ties in with a new study I saw that came out this week, finding that when people fantasize about their partners, it promotes pro relationship behaviors and it actually increases desire for your partner. So when you're having sexual fantasies about your partner specifically, it makes you want them more and it makes you go out of your way to do nice things for them.

So in that way, fantasizing about your partner can actually be really good for stimulating passion and keeping the relationship alive. I love that. What does to say about you if you fantasize about Batman? I'm not saying no, I'm not idle, it's not me. But you're right about this in your book, right, Yeah, So people do have fantasies about a range of people other than their partners. Interestingly, your partner is the same

person who's most likely to appear in your fantasies. But people do fantasize about celebrities, porn star's superheroes, Batman being one of them. Batman was actually the most fantasized about superhero among heterosexual women. And so I think, you know, for these fictional characters, superheroes and so forth, that's really just about temporarily interjecting a dose of novelty into your sex life. You know, it might create a real sense of arousal right in that moment, but it you know,

it doesn't necessarily mean that you got a thing for Batman. Well, who's the least sexiest superhero, the least sexy Superman up there at all? Superman up there at all? Superman was, But actually Superman was more popular among gay men, so you know, there are some interesting differences there. Gay men were not fantasizing about Batman, but they were really into

Superman and Captain America. Among heterosexual men, of course, Wonder Woman and Black Widow were among the most popular characters there. I'm a big fan of Black Widow, not going to lie. She's also played in the movies by the most fantasized about female celebrity among heterosexual men, Scarlett Johansen. Wait, let's talk about I don't know, I want to go down this rabbit hole bit, but black Like, what is it about?

Like dangerous sexy women? Yeah, so that's a great question, And I think a big part of it is that men have a lot of fantasies about sexual submission and about giving up power and control, and so a woman who takes charge and who is dominant, I think is a big turn on to a lot of heterosexual men, just because it can help fulfill that desired for submission or to break free of pressure to conform to certain gender roles. You know, our society dictates that men are

supposed to be the initiators of sexual activity. So having a woman who is dominant you know, something that is very appealing to a lot of men. Fascinating. So another factor you found was how you feel about yourself, So your self esteem, even the trait neuroticism right affects this. And I'm going to lump in another thing here which I think is related to this. I'm doing a factor analysis on the spot in my head, a subjective factor analysis.

Attachment style I think is appropriate here as well, like anxious, particularly anxious attachment style. So what do you see there

with this cluster of things. Yeah, so for people who are high in the trade of neuroticism, which is a trait that involves higher levels of emotional stability and a tendency to not deal well with stress, and for people who are high in attachment anxiety, where they have this fear of being abandoned, what I see there is that these individuals tend to play it safe in their sexual fantasies, and that they try to avoid doing things that are

going to be riskier, that are going to stress them out. Rather, they're seeking to put their minds at ease, to do something that's going to validate them and to prevent from having those distractions, anxieties and worries come in that might otherwise interfere with their enjoyment of sexual activity. Thank you

for explaining that. And we find that in our own research with attachment style predicting a lot of relationship type issues and things, I mean are not just my research, so that there's like fifty years of research on it, but our research also shows that here's a topic I'd like talking about OCD as a potential thing and gender dysphoria.

What is the link there? Yeah, So that was interesting in that I found that there was this link between compulsive sexual tendencies and having more fantasies about gender bending, so becoming the other sex or playing with your gender role or expression in some way. There is some research, not research that I've conducted, that has found this link between OCD and gender dysphoria. So my results are kind

of consistent with that. What researchers think might be going on there is basically that OCD can express itself in a lot of different ways, and that one way might be some people might have these intrusive thoughts that they're transgender when they aren't actually transgender, and so they're engaging in all these compulsive behaviors to try and verify their current gender. So there are all kinds of interesting findings there. But that's not to say that people who are transgender

are necessarily have OCD or anything like that. We're talking about something that's totally separate there. You know. I don't subscribe to that idea at all, that you know, there's anything psychologically wrong with someone who is trans. But there are these variants here, right, you know, where somebody might have OCD and that leads them to think that they

are transgender when they actually aren't. I think that's a totally separate phenomenon, and so we need to be careful in discussing it so that we're not lumping all of these things together under the same umbrella. And that's you know, again getting back to some of these controversial issues that we were talking about earlier as making these clear distinctions. So there will hold bunch of factors that this is

the common theme here. You know, it also like you know, race and like cultural things like do people tend to fantasize about people who are of their similar racial ethnic group. Yeah, And that was a really interesting and also somewhat disturbing finding in that I found that for people who were white,

they fantasized predominantly about other white people. For people who were Asian America, and they primarily fantasized about white people and very infrequently did they fantasize about other Asian Americans. And I think that part of that stems from the fact that there are all of these negative sexual stereotypes about Asian Americans and especially Asian American men, where they might be seen as asexual, or they might have negative

stereotypes about the size of a genitalia. So we see that institutionalized racism, I think can actually creep into our sexual fantasies and in terms of influencing the race of the partners that we fantasize about, and in our society, white is seen as more desirable because of the historically greater cultural power that whites have held, and so I think that's why we see whites being fantasized about more

than people of other races. And I think a lot of people just take it for granted, they don't realize it. And you know, we see this a lot where people talk about their attractions is if they have no control over them, and they say, well, it's just you know, I'm just not attracted to African Americans, right, And they'll say it nonchalantly like they have no control over it,

don't have no idea where it comes from. But I think a big part of the fact that, you know, we have these very separate race based attractions is tied into the fact that we live in a culture where there's there's a lot of racism embedded in it, and that creeps into our sexual desires. It's a very uncomfortable thought, but my data suggests that there was a lot of truth to it. So how do we see ourselves in

our sexual fantasies as our individual differences in that as well. Yeah, that's one of the things that I had never really seen explored in research on sexual fantasies that I found to be incredibly interesting. I found that most people had fantasized about changing themselves in some ways in their fantasy, whether that was having a different body type or having a different couple of penguins in my fantasy. For some people, it could be a different species, it could be a

different age, different personality. People change themselves in a lot of different ways, but there's an interesting gender difference where we see women are more likely to change their bodies than men, and I think that again stems from cultural pressures on women to look a certain way. But interestingly, we see that men are more likely to fantasize about changing their genitals than our women, and I think that's stems from the fact that there's more cultural pressure on

men to have a very large penis. And we see that gay men fantasize about changing themselves more their bodies and genitals than anyone else. And I think that's because in the gay community there's so much pressure to have a perfect body and to have, you know, very large genitals. So you know, again, I think the cultural issues really creep into our sexual fantasies in a lot of ways. Good I'm glad you brought up big genitals because I want to talk about that for someone because you make

a really excellent point. I thought an excellent point in your book about how everyone should just kind of relax, you know, like just because we know, for instance, like you're not going to enjoy the sexual experience if you're so self conscious, like my colleague Tod kashtion As colleagues have published some great stuff on having that kind of anxiety. Really reduces your sexual satisfaction. You said that we could probably relax about. You know, penisize is one thing we

could probably all relax about. Can you elaborate a little bit? Why? Sure? So, there are a couple of reasons there. One is that a lot of the men who think that their penises too small are actually totally perfectly normal. We have very inflated expectations and beliefs about what the average penis size is, so odds are, if you're concerned about your peni sizes,

you're probably pretty normal. The other thing, too, for heterosexual men, is that the vast majority of heterosexual women say they're satisfied with their partner's penis size, and they're not clamoring for the partners with much larger genitals. So, you know, a lot of this concern and anxiety that men have about their genital appearance is totally unfounded and comes from these false beliefs about what normal is and about what

they think women want. And you know, I think by having better sex education and by better understanding our bodies and what's normal, we can all relax a bit more and not get so hung up on our bodily appearance. And you know, this isn't just for men, right, there's also all of this cultural pressure anxiety on women to look a certain way, and so you know, we need it across the board. Everyone needs to feel better and more comfortable in their bodies, regardless of gender, in order

to relax and enjoy their sex lives more. I absolutely love that point. What did do you be too shy if I asked you to give some numbers on what is normal, because that might calm a lot of people.

So in terms of penis size, you know, there was a recent meta analysis where I think it looked at fifteen thousand penis size measurements taken from several different countries around the world, all performed clinically, right, so there was standardized measurement and the average was around five inches and length. You know, most men fell within a pretty narrow range, you know, in terms of men who have the sort of porn star sized penises, you know, it's a very

very small percentage of the population. I don't recall the exact number statistic offhand for that, but it's available on my blog because I've written about this before and my blog is sex and Psychology, and so you know, you can just search for fifteen thousand penis studies and that we'll target the numbers there. Now, that was obviously an

online survey as well. Right, No, so this was a meta analysis of a bunch of poh yes of course, okay, yes, yes, yeah, where people did go into a lab and there were clinical measurements performed. Gotcha. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, so let's end this conversation today talking about what I think a lot of people are really by this point, if they've made it to this point of the podcast.

First of all, congratulations, you know you're you know, like, we thank you for hanging in there on this very sensitive topic. How do you turn your fantasy into reality? And should you? And which one should you? And should you? Not? Very carefully? So I think when it comes to this link between fantasy and reality, we need to approach it with great caution and realize that not every fantasy should

be turned into a reality. So, you know, first it has to check the boxes of being safe, sane, consensual, and legal, you know, and if it doesn't meet those criteria, it's not a candidate for something that you would want to potentially act out. Does check those boxes? And you decide that this is something you really want to act

on and make a part of your sex life. Then you need to have really good communication with your partner first or partners, depending on what your fantasy is about, in order to make it happen, because when people don't have the communications goals necessary, they can wind up in a lot of trouble in their fantasies and it might

not go as planned. So it requires a lot of planning, coordination, establishing intimate communication first, coming up with some ground rules, doing some research, thinking about setting a safe word so that you or your partner can exit the situation should one of you become uncomfortable with it. There's a lot of considerations here, and it's hard to sum them all

up in a very short period of time. But this is something I go into great detail in the book, because when it comes to acting on your fantasies, yeah, there are lots of great potential rewards you can get, such as becoming closer to your partner, having a really enjoyable experience, being more sexually satisfied. But there are risks too, and some people have bad experiences and it creates a

way between them and their partners. So if you want to act on your fantasy's approach with great caution, it seems like a very sensible advice. Now, you found that only less than one in three people have made their biggest fantasy reality. So it sounds to me like most people in America are not sexually self actualized, right, Yeah, So I found that the vast majority of people said that at least for their biggest sexual fantasy of all time, they did want to act on that. I think it

was around eighty percent or so who did. That doesn't mean that they want to act on every fantasy they've ever had, but at least their biggest one. Most people do want to make it a reality, yet relatively few have ever done it. So there is this big gap between fantasy and reality for most people, it seems. Yeah, but you say, those of us who have the overweling majority of those of us who have acted our fantasies

say the end result met or exceeded expectations. So you've had eighty six percent set have met or exceed expercise that's huge. And further that it had a neutral positive impact on the relationships. Ninety one percent said it had a neutral positive impact on their relationship. So by and large, the outcomes of acting on our fantasy seem to be pretty good. So that's a big message of your book.

It seems right. And now I should say that it does vary a bit depending on the type of fantasy people were acting out, and interestingly, threesomes being the most popular sexual fantasy of all time, were the fantasy that was least likely to work out when people acted on it.

And I think it's because people don't have a script for it, and you know, there's some affective forecasting errors going on where they think in their head, how that sounds great and fun and exciting, but then they're in the situation and realize, oh, hey, I'm jealous, or I'm uncomfortable with this, or I'm not sure what to do. So you know, there's variability across fantasies, but for the most part, when people do act on their fantasies, they

report positive outcomes. But because there is that risk there of things not turning out well, that's why I say just approach with caution and do a lot of planning and prep work ahead of time, and make sure that you have good sexual communication. Here's another interesting stat which

I think relates to this sex at Dawn. Believe it or not, non monogamy fantasies were most likely to meet expectations, with nine two percent of those who had acted on non monogamy fantasies saying the outcomes were at least as good or even better than they dreamed. I mean, what

does that mean about the nature of the evolution of monogamy? Yeah, that I found to be a really fascinating finding, right, because I think a lot of people just intuitively would expect that if you're having some type of open relationship that that's fraught with all kinds of danger in peril. But for the most part, what I see is that

people report really positive experiences with that. In terms of, you know, whether we're you know, sort of meant to be or evolved to be monogamous or non monogamous, it's a great question. Different researchers have different perspectives on this.

My view is really that different people are better suited to different kinds of relationships, and some of us are very well suited to monogamy, others are very well suited to consensual non monogamy, and so I think we do well to let people choose the types of relationships that are right for them, rather than saying everybody should be doing this or that good And that's another common theme is the importance of communication for healthier sex and relationships,

no matter whatever the arrangement is that the healthy communication. So I will end with this last question, how can we break the barriers in society that prevent us from communicating about our desires? So I think really that actually starts with having better sex education. In the United States today, less than half of states even require sex ED and much smaller number require that sex ed is medically accurate.

And so we have a lot of students who just aren't really being taught at all about sex, and they're certainly not being taught how to communicate about it. The primary message we get in sex ed is just say no, don't do it. So how is that going to set people up for the ability to communicate with their partners not just about what they want, but to have conversations about consent and safe sex. So I think we need to do a lot more to lay the groundwork at

a younger age or establishing good sexual communication. So that's having better sex at in schools, having parents being comfortable talking to their kids about sex and answering their questions about it. So we need a broader cultural change and just how we think about sex and just removing that shame and stigma that comes along from just mentioning the word sex. I love that point. So you're like the Kinsey of the modern age. I'm honored to talk to

the Kinsey of the modern age today. Thank you so much for your time, and I hope a lot of people this inspires people to read your book. Yeah, thanks so much for having me Scott. It was fun. Thanks for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard, I encourage you to join in the discussion at the Psychology podcast dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Also, please add a reading and

review of the Psychology Podcast on iTunes. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the podcast, and til the next time. I'm more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.