IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0107795.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sex Attracts: Investigating Individual Differences in Attentional Bias to Sexual Stimuli

Author

Listed:
  • Sabine Kagerer
  • Sina Wehrum
  • Tim Klucken
  • Bertram Walter
  • Dieter Vaitl
  • Rudolf Stark

Abstract

We investigated the impact of sexual stimuli and the influence of sexual motivation on the performance in a dot-probe task and a line-orientation task in a large sample of males and females. All pictures (neutral, erotic) were rated on the dimensions of valence, arousal, disgust, and sexual arousal. Additionally, questionnaires measuring sexual interest/desire/motivation were employed. The ratings of the sexual stimuli point to a successful picture selection because sexual arousal did not differ between the sexes. The stimuli were equally arousing for men and women. Higher scores in the employed questionnaires measuring sexual interest/desire/motivation led to higher sexual arousal ratings of the sex pictures. Attentional bias towards sex pictures was observed in both experimental tasks. The attentional biases measured by the dot-probe and the line-orientation task were moderately intercorrelated suggesting attentional bias as a possible marker for a sex-attention trait. Finally, only the sexual sensation seeking score correlated with the attentional biases of the two tasks. Future research is needed to increase the predictive power of these indirect measures of sexual interest.

Suggested Citation

  • Sabine Kagerer & Sina Wehrum & Tim Klucken & Bertram Walter & Dieter Vaitl & Rudolf Stark, 2014. "Sex Attracts: Investigating Individual Differences in Attentional Bias to Sexual Stimuli," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 9(9), pages 1-14, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0107795
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0107795
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0107795
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0107795&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0107795?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. J. S. Morris & A. Öhman & R. J. Dolan, 1998. "Conscious and unconscious emotional learning in the human amygdala," Nature, Nature, vol. 393(6684), pages 467-470, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Heiko C Bergmann & Mark Rijpkema & Guillén Fernández & Roy P C Kessels, 2012. "The Effects of Valence and Arousal on Associative Working Memory and Long-Term Memory," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(12), pages 1-9, December.
    2. Gilles Le Garrec, 2007. "Moral sentiments, democracy and redistributive politics: between nature and culture," 2007 Meeting Papers 702, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    3. Xiang Huang & Hao Jiang & Ming Lv, 2023. "Unconscious Processing of Greenery in the Tourism Context: A Breaking Continuous Flash Suppression Experiment," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(3), pages 1-12, January.
    4. Kathrin Müsch & Andreas K Engel & Till R Schneider, 2012. "On the Blink: The Importance of Target-Distractor Similarity in Eliciting an Attentional Blink with Faces," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(7), pages 1-10, July.
    5. Gilles Le Garrec, 2007. "Moral sentiments, democracy and redistributive politics : between nature and culture," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-00973047, HAL.
    6. Rany Abend & Avi Karni & Avi Sadeh & Nathan A Fox & Daniel S Pine & Yair Bar-Haim, 2013. "Learning to Attend to Threat Accelerates and Enhances Memory Consolidation," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(4), pages 1-9, April.
    7. Renzo C. Lanfranco & Andrés Canales-Johnson & Hugh Rabagliati & Axel Cleeremans & David Carmel, 2024. "Minimal exposure durations reveal visual processing priorities for different stimulus attributes," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 15(1), pages 1-12, December.
    8. Wenli Qian & Qianli Meng & Lin Chen & Ke Zhou, 2012. "Emotional Modulation of the Attentional Blink Is Awareness-Dependent," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 7(9), pages 1-6, September.
    9. Adam Safron, 2019. "Multilevel evolutionary developmental optimization (MEDO): A theoretical framework for understanding preferences and selection dynamics," Papers 1910.13443, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2019.
    10. Elżbieta A Bajcar & Wacław M Adamczyk & Karolina Wiercioch-Kuzianik & Przemysław Bąbel, 2020. "Nocebo hyperalgesia can be induced by classical conditioning without involvement of expectancy," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(5), pages 1-20, May.
    11. Asaad H. Almohammad, 2016. "Toward a Theory of Political Emotion Causation," SAGE Open, , vol. 6(3), pages 21582440166, August.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0107795. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.