Sex-specific but not sexually explicit: pupillary responses to dressed and naked adults.

Janice Attard-Johnson,Markus Bindemann

doi:10.1098/rsos.160963

Abstract

Dilation of the pupils is an indicator of an observer's sexual interest in other people, but it remains unresolved whether this response is strengthened or diminished by sexually explicit material. To address this question, this study compared pupillary responses of heterosexual men and women to naked and dressed portraits of male and female adult film actors. Pupillary responses corresponded with observers' self-reported sexual orientation, such that dilation occurred during the viewing of opposite-sex people, but were comparable for naked and dressed targets. These findings indicate that pupillary responses provide a sex-specific measure, but are not sensitive to sexually explicit content.

Highlights

The presentation of male and female adults elicits dilation in observers’ pupils to the people category that matches their sexual interest
Whether the level of sexual exposure modulates pupillary responses, which level of exposure provides the strongest index of sexual interest with this method, and whether exposure interacts with observer sex
This study examined whether pupillary responses to the visual presentation of men and women are influenced by different levels of sexual exposure

Summary

Introduction

The presentation of male and female adults elicits dilation in observers’ pupils to the people category that matches their sexual interest This effect is observed with a variety of stimuli, ranging from static images of partially dressed adults [1,2,3] to photographs of nudes [3,4,5], and sexually explicit video [6,7]. High sexual explicitness is necessary for eliciting a response pattern that reveals observers’ sexual preferences with other physiological approaches, such as phallometric measures [8,9] This raises ethical concerns and limits the use of such measures in applied and research settings [10]. This effect was only present for some of the male images, and no difference was found

Methods

Results

Conclusion