So, Hook-Ups Do Mean More Sex?

HOOKING up has been held responsible for a number of interpersonal woes, from the proliferation of sexually transmitted diseases to the withering of courtship and the death of true love. Now, according to a round of tsking headlines, hook-ups and their Gen X cousin, ''friends with benefits,'' have been associated with another risk: overlapping lovers or, in academic parlance, ''concurrent partners.'' A new University of Iowa study, ''The Contexts of Sexual Involvement and Concurrent Sexual Partnerships,'' (yes, there is now a body of research dedicated to the hook-up and its discontents) found that compared with those in serious relationships, people hooking up with a stranger or acquaintance and lovers in ''friends with benefits'' arrangements are much more likely to sleep around simultaneously, spreading potential discord and S.T.D.'s. ''The goal was to establish the basic association between different kinds of sexual relationships and concurrency,'' says Anthony Paik, an assistant professor of sociology, whose results were published in the March issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]