TY - JOUR
T1 - Excitation Transfer Between Sexual Arousal and Other Emotions in a Community Sample
AU - Schippers, Eveline E.
AU - Smid, Wineke J.
AU - Both, Stephanie
AU - Smit, Johannes H.
N1 - Funding Information: We thank Jennifer Kool and Maxime Schriek for their help with data acquisition and Anna Laura Huckelba for her help in proof reading the article. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2022/11
Y1 - 2022/11
N2 - Excitation transfer, the transfer of arousal from one emotion to another, might be a mechanism in the development of unusual sexual interests. In this pilot study, we investigated whether we could induce excitation transfer between various emotions and sexual arousal in a laboratory setting with 30 male volunteers. We induced low-level sexual arousal in four different emotional states (aggression/dominance, endearment, fear, disgust) and a neutral state. Sexual arousal was measured using penile plethysmography and self-report. Although there was no mean group effect, possibly due to large interindividual variations, 60% of the subjects showed more sexual arousal in response to sexual stimulation in at least one of the emotional states than in the neutral state. Excitation transfer was most prominent with aggression/dominance and least prominent with disgust. Genital excitation transfer was strongly related to lower penile reactivity and to higher self-reported erotophilia. This pilot study paves the way for further research into excitation transfer as a mechanism to increase the salience of stimuli that otherwise would not have been sexual in nature.
AB - Excitation transfer, the transfer of arousal from one emotion to another, might be a mechanism in the development of unusual sexual interests. In this pilot study, we investigated whether we could induce excitation transfer between various emotions and sexual arousal in a laboratory setting with 30 male volunteers. We induced low-level sexual arousal in four different emotional states (aggression/dominance, endearment, fear, disgust) and a neutral state. Sexual arousal was measured using penile plethysmography and self-report. Although there was no mean group effect, possibly due to large interindividual variations, 60% of the subjects showed more sexual arousal in response to sexual stimulation in at least one of the emotional states than in the neutral state. Excitation transfer was most prominent with aggression/dominance and least prominent with disgust. Genital excitation transfer was strongly related to lower penile reactivity and to higher self-reported erotophilia. This pilot study paves the way for further research into excitation transfer as a mechanism to increase the salience of stimuli that otherwise would not have been sexual in nature.
KW - Excitation transfer
KW - Genital sexual arousal
KW - PPG
KW - Penile plethysmography
KW - Sexual deviance
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85128956626&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02235-x
DO - https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02235-x
M3 - Article
C2 - 35471677
SN - 0004-0002
VL - 51
SP - 3905
EP - 3918
JO - Archives of sexual behavior
JF - Archives of sexual behavior
IS - 8
ER -