Individual Differences in Masturbation and Erotica Consumption Predicting Levels of Sexual Concordance

Abstract

Concordance is not the only aspect of sexuality where significant gender differences are observable: men masturbate significantly more than women (Oliver & Hyde, 1993; Petersen & Hyde, 2011). There are also large gender differences in pornography consumption and consumption patterns (Hald, 2006). The study of concordance is important as it could assist in the further development of models of sexual response, and potentially reveal the role of gender differences in those models. Evidence suggests that the cognitive system one uses to process stimuli can affect one's subjective sexual arousal (Dove & Wiederman, 2000). Greater erotica consumption habits could lead to a better familiarity with the erotic stimuli used during the testing protocol, and this decreased novelty could produce more accurate responses for subjective sexual arousal. Using a "bottom-up" cognitive model in which people use physical sensations to infer emotional states, it is likely that increased sexual experience will lead to higher levels of concordance. Opposite-sex attracted participants (24 men and 25 women) will view a series of audiovisual stimuli depicting heterosexual sexual acts and neutral subjects. Participants will answer a series of questionnaires about their sexual history and attitudes, and will answer questions on their level of sexual arousal before and after each stimulus. Participants will continuously report their levels of subjective sexual arousal while simultaneously their genital responses, heart rate and skin conductance will be recorded. It is important to further our understanding of how much impact a participant's previous exposure to erotica, and masturbation behaviours to that erotica, have on their concordance rates; given the increasing pervasiveness and accessibility of erotica, this may prove extremely relevant to future nvestigations