Scientists tracked a two-word phrase across millions of books to uncover a major difference in sexual psychology
PsyPost • • health
Key Points:
- A study in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that the phrase “feel sexy” overwhelmingly appears in reference to women rather than men in published books, highlighting a gendered difference in how sexual desirability is expressed in language.
- Researchers analyzed over 5 million English-language books using the Google Books Ngram Viewer, discovering that 89% of qualifying “feel sexy” phrases referred to women, with female-oriented phrases appearing about 10 times more frequently than male equivalents since the late 1970s.
- The majority of books using female “feel sexy” phrases were written by women and predominantly belonged to the heterosexual romance genre, suggesting that this language reflects specific sexual scripts and reader fantasies rather than general everyday communication.
- Control searches showed no significant gender
