Assessing Changes in Sexual Attractions

Abstract

Sexual attraction is an important component of sexual orientation and is linked to people’s sexual identity and behaviour. Emerging research, typically with samples of women, finds that people experience changes over time in the genders to which they are sexually attracted. Theories and clinical applications related to sexual fluidity continue to be developed based on findings that describe changes in gender-based sexual attractions. But people are sexually attracted to targets/acts beyond men and women. The extent of change in sexual attraction over time to targets/acts beyond gender has not been studied. The goal of this research program is to describe the extent of such changes by developing and using a measure of self-reported sexual attraction (i.e., the Sexual Attractions Inventory; SAI) toward diverse targets/acts over multiple time points. The research questions addressed are (1) how much change is observed in sexual attractions over time, (2) is the SAI a reliable and valid measure of sexual attraction, and (3) what is the extent of change to diverse targets/acts generally and between biographic groups? A three-part sequential research program was conducted. This program began with a systematic review of the literature on changes in sexual attractions, finding that among 15 unique samples, sexual attractions change for almost a fifth of participants. Following this, a measure development and psychometric evaluation study was conducted with a sample of 670 university students, resulting in the use of the SAI to detect change in sexual attraction to 40 items over six months. Finally, a one-year longitudinal study was conducted using an online sample of 2,000 international participants. Effect sizes of change, reliable change indices, and group-based trajectory modeling were used to analyze the data at three time points. The results of this dissertation indicate that some people experience changes in their sexual attractions over time, but stability is common. When people experienced a change, its magnitude varied by target/act (i.e., different changes between normophilic and paraphilic targets/acts) and biographic factors (i.e., gender, age, and sexual orientation of the rater). These findings have both theoretical and clinical implications, which are further discussed.