Two New Physiological Methods to Assess the Specificity of Sexual Responses

Abstract

Psychophysiological methods to study sexual response patterns in laboratory settings have revealed an intriguing, and puzzling, gender/sex difference in the cue-specificity of genital responses. Men’s penile responses differ across stimuli depending on the presence or absence of specific sexual cues (e.g., gender and age of individuals in a sexual stimulus), with substantial responses observed for cues that correspond with sexual preferences and much less response to nonpreferred cues. This is not the case for women. Women’s genital responses (vaginal vasocongestion) are elicited by almost any sexual cue and the response magnitude is much less affected by sexual preferences, particularly for heterosexual women. Even sexual stimuli rated as sexually non-arousing and unappealing can elicit substantial vaginal responses. These findings have inspired several research questions. In particular, what is the function of relatively low cue-specificity in women? Are gender/sex differences in cue-specificity an artifact of the methods used to assess genital responses in women and men? The four studies in this dissertation address these questions by employing two novel devices to measure either genital lubrication or anal vasocongestion. Results from two studies suggest that the degree of cue-specificity in women depends on which aspect of the genital response is assessed: Genital lubrication was specific to preferred sexual stimuli, whereas vaginal vasocongestion demonstrated low cue-specificity across the entire stimulus duration. The other two studies focussed on developing and testing methodologies related to anal photoplethysmography. The results indicate that, in its current configuration, it would be premature to use anal photoplethysmography to study gender/sex differences in sexual response patterns. Taken together, the research program highlights the impact of measurement devices on sexual response patterns and underscores the importance of a multidisciplinary, multi-methodology approach to studying sexual response patterns in women and men.