It should come as little surprise that most men have 13 inch penises and super-human sports prowess and an uncanny ability to catch the largest fish in the lake among other enviable attributes. Well, maybe not most guys but ‘some’. Well, maybe not some, how about ‘just a few’.  If these boasts sound at all familiar, it is probably because you are aware that men tend to overestimate themselves in many areas. This tendency for inflation also includes the accurate accounting of sexual partners, according to an article in Psychology Today.

Research done in Canada showed that it isn’t that men have significantly ‘more’ sexual partners. After all, the men have to be having sex with someone and if it is straight men we are talking about here, then we can reasonably assume that for each sexual conquest a man speaks of, there is some woman somewhere who also holds bragging rights. So, what accounts for the disparity in the numbers? According to the study, it is basically a function of guys having a lousy memory.  Researcher Norman Brown of the University of Alberta explains that

Two out of three women remembered each partner they had or they kept a running tally. They reported an average of 6.2 people. Men, however, were twice as likely not to remember; leaving their calculations to guesswork. They reported an average of 11.9 women.

While there are a few exceptions that skew the data a bit, this explanation is a lot more credible than the locker-room tales of nerdy guys with more chicks than Solomon had wives.

Read the full post at Psychology Today.