Elsevier

Biological Psychology

Volume 70, Issue 2, October 2005, Pages 115-120
Biological Psychology

A sex difference in features that elicit genital response

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2004.12.002Get rights and content

Abstract

Previous research suggests that women's genital arousal is an automatic response to sexual stimuli, whereas men's genital arousal is dependent upon stimulus features specific to their sexual interests. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that a nonhuman sexual stimulus would elicit a genital response in women but not in men. Eighteen heterosexual women and 18 heterosexual men viewed seven sexual film stimuli, six human films and one nonhuman primate film, while measurements of genital and subjective sexual arousal were recorded. Women showed small increases in genital arousal to the nonhuman stimulus and large increases in genital arousal to both human male and female stimuli. Men did not show any genital arousal to the nonhuman stimulus and demonstrated a category-specific pattern of arousal to the human stimuli that corresponded to their stated sexual orientation. These results suggest that stimulus features necessary to evoke genital arousal are much less specific in women than in men.

Section snippets

Participants

We recruited heterosexual women and men via advertisements in an “alternative” urban newspaper (Chicago Reader). Fifty women responded to the advertisement, 28 were eligible to participate and scheduled an appointment, and 20 attended the experimental session. Thirty-nine men responded to the advertisement, 35 were eligible to participate and scheduled an appointment, and 20 attended the experimental session. Women were much more likely to be excluded than men because women who used oral

Results

Genital and subjective sexual arousal to neutral, nonhuman, and human stimuli were examined separately for women and for men. We submitted subjective and genital responses to each stimulus category to planned repeated contrasts, comparing the mean response to each stimulus category to the mean of adjacent categories. The human sexual stimuli were entered in a separate order for each group, reflecting the expected arousal pattern for heterosexual women and men. For women, we entered both genital

Discussion

Our results suggest that nonspecific sexual features are sufficient to induce intermediate levels of genital arousal in women, even in the absence of a subjective appraisal of the stimulus as sexually arousing. In other words, women showed a significant increase in genital arousal to a nonhuman sexual stimulus, but did not report being sexually aroused by this stimulus. In contrast, men showed neither genital nor subjective arousal to the nonhuman sexual stimulus; nonspecific sexual features

Acknowledgements

This research was based, in part, on the first author's doctoral dissertation, presented to the Department of Psychology, Northwestern University. A National Institute of Child and Human Development Grant R03-HD41770-01 and a grant from the American Psychological Foundation funded this research. We thank R. Blanchard, J. M. Cantor, M. Lalumière, and M. Seto for helpful comments, G. Reiger for his assistance with video editing and data collection, and we thank the study participants.

References (38)

  • K. Freund

    A laboratory method for diagnosing predominance of homo- or hetero-erotic interest in the male

    Behavior Research and Therapy

    (1963)
  • M.E. Seligman

    Phobias and preparedness

    Behavior Therapy

    (1971)
  • R. Blanchard et al.

    Sensitivity and specificity of the phallometric test for pedophilia in nonadmitting sex offenders

    Psychological Assessment

    (2001)
  • R. Blanchard et al.

    Phallometric detection of fetishistic arousal in heterosexual male cross-dressers

    The Journal of Sex Research

    (1986)
  • J.A. Bernat et al.

    Sexually aggressive and nonaggressive men: sexual arousal and judgments in response to acquaintance rape and consensual analogues

    Journal of Abnormal Psychology

    (1999)
  • S. Both et al.

    Modulation of spinal reflexes by aversive and sexually appetitive stimuli

    Psychophysiology

    (2003)
  • M.L. Chivers et al.

    A sex difference in the specificity of sexual arousal

    Psychological Science

    (2004)
  • Chivers, M. L., Seto, M. C., Laan, E., Lalumière, M. L., in preparation. A sex difference in the agreement of...
  • K. Freund

    Male homosexuality: an analysis of the pattern

  • K. Freund et al.

    Phallometric diagnosis of pedophilia

    Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

    (1989)
  • K. Freund et al.

    Heterosexual aversion in homosexual males

    British Journal of Psychiatry

    (1973)
  • K. Freund et al.

    Frotteurism and the theory of courtship disorder

  • K. Freund et al.

    Assessment of the sensitivity and specificity of a phallometric test: an update of phallometric diagnosis of pedophilia

    Psychological Assessment

    (1991)
  • J.H. Geer et al.

    The information processing approach to human sexuality

  • G.T. Harris et al.

    Maximizing the discriminant validity of phallometric assessment data

    Psychological Assessment

    (1992)
  • E. Janssen

    Psychophysiological measures of sexual response

  • A.C. Kinsey et al.

    Sexual Behavior in the Human Female

    (1953)
  • Laan, E., 1994. Determinants of sexual arousal in women. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Amsterdam,...
  • E. Laan et al.

    Determinants of female sexual arousal: psychophysiological theory and data

    Annual Review of Sex Research

    (1995)
  • Cited by (206)

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text