Baumeister · Psychological bulletin 2000 · narrative review · n=?

Gender differences in erotic plasticity: the female sex drive as socially flexible and responsive.

Cited 796 times in the scientific literature.

Level 5 - mechanism / opinion, no new human data

Narrative literature review and theoretical framework without systematic methodology.

PubMed 10825779 · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.126.3.347 · record verified 2026-08-26

What was done

The author conducted a narrative review and theoretical synthesis evaluating whether female sex drive is more malleable than male sex drive in response to sociocultural and situational factors, assessing literature across three specific predictions regarding behavioral variation over time, responsiveness to sociocultural variables, and attitude-behavior consistency.

What was found

The abstract reports no numerical data or statistical effect sizes. It qualitatively reports that evidence supports three predictions: individual women show more variation across time in sexual behavior than men, female sexuality exhibits larger effects in response to sociocultural variables, and sexual attitude-behavior consistency is lower for women than for men.

Why it matters

This paper introduces and frames the hypothesis of erotic plasticity to explain sex differences in responsiveness to social and cultural determinants of sexuality.

Limits

The abstract describes a narrative review rather than a systematic review or meta-analysis, providing no study counts, sample sizes, or quantitative effect sizes (n = ?). The proposed explanatory mechanisms remain theoretical.

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