The distinctiveness of sexual motives in relation to sexual desire and desirable partner attributes

Abstract

The distinctiveness of eight dispositional sexual motives and global sexual desire was examined to extend evidence concerning the construct validity of a multidimensional conceptualization of sexual motivation. Sexual motives were measured by the Affective and Motivational Orientation Related to Erotic Arousal Questionnaire (AMORE; Hill & Preston, 1996). As predicted, self‐reported arousal to scenarios describing eight motive‐relevant situations were correlated most strongly with the theoretically most relevant of the eight sexual motives. Although global sexual desire ratings were moderately correlated with responses to all eight sexual scenarios, the correlations were eliminated or substantially reduced when controlling for the theoretically most relevant sexual motive scores. Similarly, ratings of desirable partner attributes were more highly and consistently correlated with specific sexual motives than with global sexual desire. The results provide further evidence of the validity of the sexual motive construct and the AMORE instrument. The results also demonstrate the usefulness of focusing on specific aspects of sexual motivation as opposed to global sexual desire.