NEW YORK -- After the lights go out and they close the book covers, women whoread romance novels are apt to pick up the action under the bedcovers, a new study found.
Two psychologists, Claire Coles and Johnna Shamp, found reading helps women to fantasize, and women who read romances make love nearly 75 percent more often than women who do not.
Their report, published in the November issue of Psychology Today, released Monday, concluded housewives who read romance novels were 'more satisfied with sex than were non-readers of romance novels.'
Romance novel readers reported making love 3.04 times weekly, compared to 1.75 times reported by non-readers.
But Coles said she did not know if the study meant erotic novels made women more interested in sex, or whether women with high sex drives were more likely to read and be stimulated by the novels.
'Readers reported using fantasy to improve their experience during sexual intercourse, while non-readers did so seldom or never,' she said.
Cole, attached to Emory University School of Medicine, and Shamp, to Oglethorpe, both in Atlanta, interviewed 48 housewives and working women.
