The Influence of Sexual Arousal on Self-Reported Sexual Willingness and Automatic Approach to Models of Low, Medium, and High Prior Attractiveness

DOI

Anecdotal evidence suggests that sexual attraction is flexible, and that high levels of sexual arousal can promote sexual willingness and approach tendencies toward a priori low attractive mates. This experimental study tested whether heightened sexual arousal can lower the threshold for sexual willingness and automatic approach tendencies toward potential sex partners of low and medium attractiveness. Heterosexual male (n = 54) and female (n = 61) participants were randomly assigned to a sexual arousal or control condition. Approach tendencies were indexed using a reaction time task. Sexual willingness was indexed using participant ratings of willingness to kiss and to consider having sex with same- and other-sex models of low, medium, and high attractiveness. Overall, participants showed stronger approach to models of high and medium than of low attractiveness. Sexual arousal weakened this differential responding but did not result in a robust increase of approach toward less attractive other-sex or same-sex models. Sexual willingness toward less attractive models was not affected by sexual arousal. Independent of condition, women reported greater sexual willingness toward same-sex models. The current pattern of findings does not support the notion that sexual arousal promotes automatic approach and sexual willingness to a broader array of sex partners.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.34894/UNMYIO
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2019.1687641
Metadata Access https://dataverse.nl/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.34894/UNMYIO
Provenance
Creator Borg, Charmaine ORCID logo; Pawlowska, Aleksandra
Publisher DataverseNL
Contributor Borg, Charmaine; Research Data Office; University of Groningen
Publication Year 2019
Rights CC0 Waiver; info:eu-repo/semantics/restrictedAccess; https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
OpenAccess false
Contact Borg, Charmaine (University of Groningen); Research Data Office (University of Groningen)
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format application/octet-stream; application/x-spss-sav; application/x-spss-syntax
Size 23364; 149179; 149819; 1322; 23250; 23283
Version 1.0
Discipline Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Life Sciences; Social Sciences; Social and Behavioural Sciences; Soil Sciences