EFFECTS OF EROTICA: LABORATORY STUDIES OF PHYSIOLOGICAL RESPONSES
Almost a decade ago, Zuckerman made a very thorough and interesting review of the state of the art of measuring sexual arousal. His general conclusions were that there were virtually no reliable, specific, sensitive, and objective criteria for determining sexual arousal other than erections in men and vaginal blood flow changes in women. In addition, the invasive techniques required to monitor these changes might often produce false positive and false negative results.
Since that time, a number of researchers have attempted to find a reliable, specific, and relatively noninvasive technique for measuring sexual arousal and physiologic response to erotica. The logical first choice for such an indicator might be changes in sex hormone levels. From a group of male volunteers Lincoln (1974) sampled venous blood from a catheter every ten to forty minutes and attempted to correlate changes in testosterone and luteinizing hormone levels with exposure to an erotic film. Levels were obtained for several hours before and after film viewing. He concluded that “There were no changes in blood levels of LH or testosterone which could be definitely related to the films. … it seems possible that a single skin puncture has a greater impact on the hypo-thalamic/pituitary axis than a 30 minute sexually stimulating film”.
Contrary to Lincoln’s findings, Pirke and others demonstrated different results. In their study, plasma testosterone was measured before, after, and during the showing of an explicit sexual movie. Relative to the control group who saw a nonsexual movie, the experimental group showed an average increase of 35% in testosterone levels peaking sixty to ninety minutes after the film.
A resolution of these conflicting results is not immediately apparent. It would seem that at the present time the best that can be said is that plasma testosterone levels are not reliable indicators of response to erotica.
The correlation of arousal and hormone levels in women is even more difficult to demonstrate than in men. Money and Ehrhardt have theorized that it may not be a “female” hormone which is responsible for arousal in women—it may be an androgen or “male” hormone.
Abramson and others collected self-reports from 133 women of sexual arousal to an erotic story. The independent factors were hormone levels controlled by birth control pills versus no pills, and phase of menstrual cycle. They found that the greatest degree of sexual arousal and genital sensations were experienced by women on the pill while they were in their menstrual phase. The least arousal was shown by women on the pill during their premenstrual phase. There were no significant differences in response to erotic stimuli between menstrual phases for women who were not taking the pill. These data are not wholly consistent with other studies (Money and Ehrhardt) which have found that sexual interest and arousability in women peaked during the secretory and luteal phase of their cycle.
In females as with males, the exact nature of the connections among arousal, hormone levels, and erotic stimuli is not yet known.
Ray and Thompson have demonstrated an interaction between personality traits and physiologic responses to erotica. They found that although all subjects responded with increased GSR to scenes of coitus, low sex-guilt subjects exhibited significant cardiac deceleration during viewing. High sex-guilt subjects failed to show significant deceleration.
Cardiac deceleration is not thought to be a measure of sexual arousal but rather, a correlate of attention. Fixing one’s attention on some thing usually will cause a slowing of the heart beat. Ray and Thompson have probably demonstrated that low sex-guilt subjects pay more attention to sexual stimuli, and high sex-guilt subjects, even though aroused, may not pay such close attention to sexual scenes.
This finding is intuitively consistent with the data collected by the COP, which show that conporns generally have seen less erotica than have proporns. One might question whether they see less because they are conporns or whether they are conporns because they see less erotica. The Ray and Thompson study may suggest that they see less because they are conporns.
*179/187/5*
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.