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The Effects of Positive Versus Negative Mood States on Attentional Processes During Exposure to Erotica

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Abstract

The relationship between emotions and sexual functioning has been documented since early sex research. Among other effects, emotions are expected to impact sexual response by shaping individuals’ attention to sexual cues; yet, this assumption has not been tested. This study aimed to investigate whether attentional processes to sexual cues are impacted by state emotions, and whether the processes impacted by emotions relate to subjective sexual arousal to a sex film clip. A total of 52 men and 73 women were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: (1) a negative mood induction condition (sadness as dominant emotion), (2) a positive mood induction condition (amusement as dominant emotion), and a (3) neutral/control condition. After mood induction, participants were exposed to a sex film clip while their focus of visual attention was measured using an eye tracker. Three areas of interest (AOI) were considered within the sex clip: background (non-sexual cues), body interaction, and genital interaction. Self-reported attention, thoughts during the sex clip, percent dwell time, and pupil size to AOI were considered as attentional markers. Findings revealed that the attentional processes were not impacted by the mood conditions. Instead, gender effects were found. While men increased their visual attention to the background area of the film clip, women increased attention to the genital area. Also, sexual arousal thoughts during exposure to the sex clip were consistently related to subjective sexual arousal regardless of the momentary emotional state. Findings add to the literature by showing that men and women process the sexual components of a stimulus differently and by challenging the assumption that emotions shape attention to sexual cues.

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Notes

  1. A set of film clips described in Bartolini’s (2011) work for sadness and amusement induction was previously visualized and rated by a small sample of male and female college students. Scenes from The Shawshank Redemption (1994) and The Hangover (2009) (3 min each) presented the highest rates on sadness and amusement, respectively. These scenes were selected for the main study. The neutral film clip has been regularly used for research purposes at the Portuguese SexLab and consists of a 3-min scientific documentary. While participants in the neutral and negative condition did not recognize the film scene, most of the participants in the positive condition identified the film scene as being part of The Hangover, even when they did not watch the movie.

  2. Dwell time starts at the moment the AOI is fixated and ends at the moment the last fixation on the AOI ends; sum of durations from all fixations and saccades that hit the AOI.

  3. Pupil size is a measure of arousal and is often used as a marker of attentional effort. This study was designed to capture pupil size as a proxy of attention to specific cues within a sexual stimulus.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia, a grant awarded to Joana Carvalho (SFRH/BPD/76219/2011).

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Correspondence to Joana Carvalho.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Carvalho, J., Pereira, R., Barreto, D. et al. The Effects of Positive Versus Negative Mood States on Attentional Processes During Exposure to Erotica. Arch Sex Behav 46, 2495–2504 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0875-3

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