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Attention and Emotional Responses to Sexual Stimuli and Their Relationship to Sexual Desire

Attention and Emotional Responses to Sexual Stimuli and Their Relationship to Sexual Desire Little is known about why individuals vary in their levels of sexual desire. Information processing models, like Barlow’s (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 54:140–148, 1986) model of sexual functioning, suggest that individuals with higher sexual desire attend more and respond with more pleasant emotions to sexual cues than individuals with lower levels of sexual desire. In this study, 69 participants (36 women, 33 men) completed a dot detection task measuring attention capture by sexual stimuli and a startle eyeblink modulation task indexing the valence of emotional response to affective stimuli. Participants with high levels of sexual desire were slower to detect targets in the dot detection task that replaced sexual images but did not differ in startle eyeblink responses to sexual stimuli. The results suggest that the amount of attention captured by sexual stimuli is a stronger predictor of a person’s sexual desire level than the valence of the emotional responses elicited by such stimuli. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Archives of Sexual Behavior Springer Journals

Attention and Emotional Responses to Sexual Stimuli and Their Relationship to Sexual Desire

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References (120)

Publisher
Springer Journals
Copyright
Copyright © 2007 by Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
Subject
Psychology; Sexual Behavior; Public Health; Social Sciences, general
ISSN
0004-0002
eISSN
1573-2800
DOI
10.1007/s10508-007-9236-6
pmid
17943435
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Little is known about why individuals vary in their levels of sexual desire. Information processing models, like Barlow’s (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 54:140–148, 1986) model of sexual functioning, suggest that individuals with higher sexual desire attend more and respond with more pleasant emotions to sexual cues than individuals with lower levels of sexual desire. In this study, 69 participants (36 women, 33 men) completed a dot detection task measuring attention capture by sexual stimuli and a startle eyeblink modulation task indexing the valence of emotional response to affective stimuli. Participants with high levels of sexual desire were slower to detect targets in the dot detection task that replaced sexual images but did not differ in startle eyeblink responses to sexual stimuli. The results suggest that the amount of attention captured by sexual stimuli is a stronger predictor of a person’s sexual desire level than the valence of the emotional responses elicited by such stimuli.

Journal

Archives of Sexual BehaviorSpringer Journals

Published: Oct 18, 2007

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