A duo of Australian researchers have succeeded in finding a link between lasting happiness and recurring orgasms.
And if, finally, sex was an inexhaustible source of happiness on a daily basis? Russell Smyth and Zhiming Cheng, two professors of economics from the universities of Monash and Wollongong (Australia) succeeded in proving that having frequent orgasms would bring as much happiness as a big salary increase. This pleasure would even be increased tenfold when his partner reaches orgasm himself.
This would be the first study to highlight the direct relationship between lasting happiness and sexual pleasure.
A pleasure equivalent to a pay rise
At the dawn of the 2000s, the two researchers took an interest in the sexual life of nearly 3,800 Chinese, of all ages and all social origins. They asked these people to answer various questions about their intimate life and to evaluate the happiness that these reports bring them, in particular in comparison with a financial gratification. The first results published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization are clear, the happiest people are those who have sex frequently, and with only one person.
On average, frequently orgasming would equate to the happiness of getting a 130% raise in your monthly salary. Even better, when it is the partner who reaches seventh heaven, it is a feeling of happiness representing an increase of 142% that takes hold of the person. “Those who have more sexual activity and better quality sexuality are happier,” conclude the authors of this survey. We also learn that having sex as many times as we want promotes access to happiness.
On the other hand, there are different situations in which happiness and sex do not necessarily make you happy. If, of course, we can directly think of abstinence as a source of unhappiness, it is in fact the multiplication of partners that would be the cause of a loss of happiness. People having sex with the same person are more easily happy than those collecting conquests. We can therefore conclude here that the feeling of love is an important factor in the sexual relationship. Unfaithful people, on the other hand, seem to be more unhappy than others.
Towards long-term happiness
This work is a first in the economic literature. If other research had indeed highlighted a link between happiness and sex, they had been unable to answer the following question: is pleasure the basis of happiness or vice versa? If sex is a factor of immediate happiness, the purpose of this survey is to show its influence in the longer term.
However, these works should be qualified with the results of other works also published in the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization who affirm that making love too often can be a brake on desire and pleasure. A result which could however be explained by the protocol of the study which, according to the authors, could have induced a blockage in the people questioned.
