Psychologists have demonstrated for the first time ever that men have a greater sexual drive than women in a recent meta study.

The researchers – from Saarland University in Saarbruecken, Saarland State, Germany – say they have proved that men are more sexually motivated than women.

They evaluated more than 200 existing studies dating back to 1996, which included more than 620,000 participants above the age of 14.

Malte Friese – professor of Social Psychology at Saarland University and co-author of the study – said in a statement: “We defined the concept of sexual motivation based on how often someone experiences sexual feelings, thoughts, and behaviors.

“People with strong sexual motivation think about sex more often, feel sexual desire more often and masturbate more.”

The evaluated research also showed the experts to what extent they could identify the differences between both genders, according to Friese.

He said: “We found that there is indeed a discrepancy and that men have more sexual motivation than women.”

But Friese emphasised that individuals are all different saying: “Even though men are, on average, more sexually motivated than women, there are many women who are more interested in sex than many men.

“Based on our data, we estimate that 24 to 29 percent of women are more motivated by sex than the average man.”

Friese stated that his team’s greatest struggle was to find out whether the participants gave honest answers about their sex lives.

The psychologist said: “There was some evidence of such imprecise responses in our data, which could also be explained by cultural influences.

“For example, men reported having more sexual partners than women did.

“In heterosexual groups, however, significant differences are unlikely, but may be a sign of distorted response behavior by women or men or both.

But even skewed responses did not dramatically change the results, as a gender-specific difference in the sexual drive was still evident.

He added: “We propose that sexual motivation, like other complex human traits, is determined by both social and genetic factors.

“If, for example, children already observe that men and women express their sexuality differently and that others appreciate or reject this, they learn to behave accordingly later.

“Likewise, our work says nothing about whether less or more pronounced sexual motivation is desirable – there is no judgment in these results in any way.”

The results were published in the US journal ‘Psychological Bulletin’ in November.