Effects of romantic themes in erotica on plethysmographically-assessed sexual arousal in males

The present study was designed as an extension of our earlier work which examined the gender effects associated with self-reports of sexual arousal to romantic themes in sexually explicit videos. In our previous study, we found that both male and female college students reported greater arousal to explicit videos with, than without, expressions of love and affection portrayed in the video. It was proposed that males may have been distorting their reports of sexual arousal in order to appear socially desirable. The present study addressed this concern by (1) utilizing the penile plethysmograph in order to provide a cross-validation of sexual arousal, and (2) including a measure of social desirability in order to determine its relationship to self-reported sexual arousal. In the current study, 42 male subjects, run individually, viewed a baseline video and one of two experimental videos while wearing a penile strain gauge. One experimental video contained a couple interacting affectionately followed by the same couple engaging in explicit, sexual behaviors (High Love/Affection condition). The other video (Low Love/Affection condition) contained a still photo of the couple followed by sexual content identical to that of the other video. Following the videos, subjects were asked to self-report their sexual arousal as well as complete several demographics and attitudinal measures. Plethysmographic data suggested that subjects who viewed the High Love/Affection video demonstrated some sexual arousal to the romantic content alone. Subjects who viewed the Low Love/Affection video demonstrated no sexual arousal until the sexual portion of the video commenced. After about 50 seconds of sexual content, group differences in plethysmographically-assessed sexually arousal disappeared. Further, unlike in our previous study, self-reports of sexual arousal did not statistically differ between the two groups. Attitudes about the role of love and affection in sexual activity were statistically unrelated to both physiologically-assessed and self- reported sexual arousal. The meaning of the data, the differences between the results of our past and present studies, and implications for future research, are discussed.