A trio of psychologists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, working with colleagues from the National Research Institute, in Poland, State University of New York, and the University of Chicago has found that the degree of men’s sexual desire is not tied to daily. testosterone levels.

In their study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society Bthe group collected daily saliva samples from volunteers who also reported their sexual desire levels for a month.

A common belief is that men feel stronger sexual desire due to increases in their testosterone levels—a logical conclusion considering that testosterone is commonly associated with masculinity in males. But whether its levels are a driver of sexual desire has not previously been tested.

The researchers recruited 41 adult male volunteers. For 31 days, each of them collected daily saliva samples for testosterone measurement and reported their levels of sexual desire in a daily diary along with other thoughts related to courtship, dating or relationships of a sexual nature.

Prior research has shown that testosterone levels are known to fluctuate, often in response to daily activities such as sexual behavior, degree of tiredness and even what meals are eaten. They also noted that it can take as long as three days for such activities to impact levels due to the ways that testosterone is produced in the body. With that in mind, they analyzed the data from the experiment.

The researchers were not able to find any association between testosterone levels and degree of sexual desire on a given day. They did, however, find differences in testosterone level changes between single males and those who were in sexual relationships. Single men, they found, tended to work harder at courtship on days when their testosterone levels were high—thus, the hormone appeared to be a driver of mate selection rather than sexual desire.

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