18. Sexual Self-Schemas and Neural Processing of Sexual Information in Women

Abstract

Previous research suggests that humans respond differently to reproductively-relevant information in the environment, including heightened neural responses to sexual versus non-sexual cues. Limited research, however, has examined individual variation in the early neural processing of sexual information. Sexual self-schemas, or one’s views of themselves as a sexual person, provide a stable cognitive framework for processing sexually-relevant information, and may relate to women’s sexual responses. This study seeks to examine how women’s sexual self-schemas relate to the early neural processing of sexual information and their subsequent subjective sexual arousal. Twenty women are being recruited from the Queen’s psychology subject pool and data collection is currently underway. I am assessing women’s neural responses to sexual and non-sexual images (i.e., erect penises versus elbows) using electroencephalography (EEG), and women are reporting their feelings of arousal to the sexual images. Women are also completing a measure of sexual self-schemas. I predict that women who have more positive sexual self-schema scores will have a stronger neural response to sexual stimuli than women with more negative schema scores. In addition, I predict that women with more positive schema scores will self-report higher sexual arousal than women with more negative scores. The findings of this study will improve our understanding of the role of sexual self-schemas and early neural processing in women’s sexual response, thus lending to the development of a comprehensive, empirically-supported model of sexual response that accounts for within-gender variability.