Subjective sexual arousal in response to erotica: effects of gender, guided fantasy, erotic stimulus, and duration of exposure.

This study was designed to evaluate the effects of gender, guided fantasy, erotic stimulus (with or without audio), and exposure duration on the subjective sexual arousal of participants watching a 10-min erotic video excerpt depicting sexual activities between a heterosexual adult couple. The excerpt was shown to 105 male and 110 female undergraduates, and sexual arousal was measured four times, at intervals of 1, 4, 7, and 10,min from the onset of the excerpt. While no erotic stimulus effect was found, analysis of variance showed main effects of gender, guided fantasy, and exposure duration, and three two-way interactions of gender x guided fantasy, gender x exposure duration, and guided fantasy x exposure duration. According to the results of simple effects tests, the gender effects were found regardless of whether they had firstly experienced a guided fantasy, while the guided fantasy effect was detected only for the females. The simple main effects for gender were found at all four time intervals, while the pattern of within-subject contrasts at the four time intervals for the males was different from that for the females. The simple main effects for guided fantasy were not found at 1,min and 4,min, but at 7,min and 10,min, while the pattern of within-subject contrasts at the four time intervals for the guided fantasy present condition was different from that for the absent condition. The findings involving gender differences were discussed in the context of biological and social factors.

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