Premium
Determinants of subjective experience of sexual arousal in women: Feedback from genital arousal and erotic stimulus content
Author(s) -
LAAN ELLEN,
EVERAERD WALTER,
VELDE JANNEKE,
GEER JAMES H.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
psychophysiology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.661
H-Index - 156
eISSN - 1469-8986
pISSN - 0048-5772
DOI - 10.1111/j.1469-8986.1995.tb02095.x
Subject(s) - arousal , sexual arousal , psychology , sex organ , stimulus (psychology) , audiology , developmental psychology , social psychology , cognitive psychology , medicine , genetics , biology
Sixty‐two women participated in a study designed to explore the association between gential and subjective sexual arousal. Four stimulus conditions were created, designed to evoke differential patterns of genital arousal over time. Subjects were instructed to report sensations in their genitalia while being exposed to the same erotic stimulus on repeated trials or to a series of varying erotic stimuli. Detection of genital arousal was facilitated by the occurrence of changes in genital arousal over trials. That is, genital and subjective sexual arousal were linearly related in conditions that resulted in large differences in genital arousal over trails, whereas such a relation was absent in conditions in which genital arousal levels remained relatively constant. In women, peripheral feedback from consciously detected genital arousal seems to be a relatively unimportant determinant of subjective sexual arousal.