The episode on how to masturbate with a college roommate around reminded me of this exam question I had once.

So we're clear here: I have permission to share this. Otherwise it would be called academic dishonesty. The question referred to Alfred Kinsey's study of sexual behavior in the human male - this one - and challenged me to find the basis to Kinsey's claim which goes something like "By taking the sex history of a 16 year old male, I can predict better than any known psychometric test whether or not that male will go to college."

I bet you're thinking "sex history as a predictor of college enrollment?"

Yeah!

Kinsey argued he could ask a 16 year old male about his sexual outlets and know whether or not he would go to college.

Now, before I go explaining Kinsey's fascinating trick-slash-scientific correlation, I want to point out that Kinsey's study - one of the largest, most prominent contributions to the field of sexology - was conducted and published in the 1940s.

At that time, close to half of US homes did not have indoor plumbing - toilet outside! The minimum wage was 43 cents per hour. The Second World War had just ended, and the Frisbee was a new invention!

While this was an 800 page report with true findings capable of matching a person's sex history to their educational future, it's not a prediction of YOUR millennial journey until someone else replicates the research and re-validates Kinsey's claim. 

Ok, so Kinsey's claim - here's how he did it: First, he, with the help of research assistants, collected data from over 5,300 participants for 9 years. By data, I mean he took their sex histories thoroughly and intricately. That's a lot of people and a lot of time! Then, he took all of the information he'd gathered and started plotting it on graphs. 

For this claim he used correlating variables of educational level and sex history. Educational level on the x-axis because we're determining whether or not it's dependent on the person's sex history. Dependent variable - x-axis.

Sex history, or more specifically the sexual outlets a male had, went on the Y-axis.  Independent variable - y-axis.

This would include: total outlets, masturbation, nocturnal emissions (wet dreams), petting to climax, total premarital intercourse, premarital intercourse with prostitutes, total extramarital intercourse, marital intercourse, and homosexual outlets. 

Now, this is where it gets tricky, but I believe you can follow along. So Kinsey is trying to predict from a person's sexual behaviors pre- age 16, what they're going to do for their education post-17. Which means we're looking at their pre-16 sexual data, and their post-17 educational data. Page 337: "The single males who have the lowest frequency of sexual outlet are those who belong to the college level." So, the less sex, the more likely there's higher education in the person's future. 

Nocturnal emissions - where the semen is ejaculated in one's sleep - were the most common among males who went to college. So, the more wet dreams, the more likely higher ed is in the person's future. Get this, nearly 100% of males who experienced wet dreams went to college, compared to 86% who went to high school, and 75% who went to grade school. Want to check my stats? Page 343 - 344. Figure 106 illustrates how these 3 educational levels differentiate in their sexual patterns.

Kinsey could predict accurately that a 16 year old male would go to college if: he had masturbated more than his peers; had more nocturnal emissions at an earlier age than his peers; experienced less intercourse with companions than his peers, and experienced fewer homosexual outlets than his peers.

What do you say: Can we still apply this claim to modern day? Are all of you, with your new sex hacks for dorm room masturbation, in college because of early-onset wet dreams?

Stay curious!