Empathic sexual responses in heterosexual women and men

Abstract

Two distinct empathic sexual responses have been mentioned anecdotally in the literature: (1) an increase in physiological sexual arousal in response to the sexual arousal of the partner (empathic turn-on) and (2) a decrease in physiological sexual arousal in response to lack of sexual arousal in the partner (empathic turn-off), but to our knowledge this is the first systematic study of the phenomenon. There were 722 women and 415 men who participated in the anonymous computer survey. Of the total of 1137 participants, 90.5% agreed that they had experienced empathic turn-on, 69.1% agreed that they had experienced empathic turn-off, 64.4% agreed that they had experienced both empathic turn-on and turn-off and only 4.7% had experienced neither, χ 2 (1, n = 1137) = 19.484, p < .001. Sexual satisfaction of participants was significantly lower at the levels of partner's orgasm likelihood below 0.5 than above 0.5 in both men and women when analyzed separately. Both men and women were more likely to express multiple or sustained orgasms (instead of single orgasms) with a good partner than while masturbating. Empathic sexual responses can modulate the sexual arousal of both men and women by increasing sexual arousal when the partner is aroused and decreasing sexual arousal when the partner is not sexually responsive.