Chapter 4 - The stimulus control of sexual incentive motivation: The human

Abstract

This chapter presents the current knowledge about sexual incentives in the human. Human sexual behavior is fundamentally different from that of most other mammals in many aspects. Most men and women are attracted only to some individuals of their preferred sex. This means that there is, somehow, a process of choice involved. Of all available potential sexual partners, only a few have the capacity to activate sexual incentive motivation in a particular individual. Although sexual incentive stimuli have similar effects in most individuals in rats, there is a huge interindividual variation in the human. The selective activation of approach by a specific incentive stimulus or a set of incentive stimuli constitutes the basic mechanism of mate choice. Verbal messages containing descriptions of sexual activities as well as visual stimuli, either photographs or moving pictures, illustrating copulatory behaviors enhance genital blood flow in women and men. Tactile stimulation of the genitals is an efficient stimulus for enhancing genital blood flow. The state of limerence may be a kind of subjective experience of sexual incentive motivation. An important difference between human and nonhuman sexual incentives is that most or perhaps all human sexual incentives are learned. Any stimulus may acquire sexual incentive properties through social learning including formal and informal instruction.