"Excessive" viewing of visual sexual stimuli (VSS) is the most commonly reported hypersexual behavior problem and is especially amenable to laboratory study. A pattern of enhanced sexual cue responsiveness is expected in this sample if hypersexuality shares features of other addiction models. Participants (N=122) who either reported or denied problematic VSS use were presented with emotional, including explicit sexual, images while their evoked response potentials were recorded.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRisky sexual behaviors typically occur when a person is sexually motivated by potent, sexual reward cues. Yet, individual differences in sensitivity to sexual cues have not been examined with respect to sexual risk behaviors. A greater responsiveness to sexual cues might provide greater motivation for a person to act sexually; a lower responsiveness to sexual cues might lead a person to seek more intense, novel, possibly risky, sexual acts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnterior alpha asymmetry of electroencephalographic (EEG) signals has been suggested to index state approach (or avoidance) motivation. This model has not yet been extended to high approach-motivation sexual stimuli, which may represent an important model of reward system function. Sixty-five participants viewed a neutral and a sexually motivating film while their EEG was recorded, and reported their sexual feelings after each film.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVisual sexual stimuli can motivate sexual behaviors that can risk or enhance health. How one allocates attention to a sexually motivating stimulus may be important for predicting its effect on sexual feelings, sexual risk behaviors, and sexual problems. A large sample (N = 157) of men and women rated the similarity of all possible pairs of photographs of women, which had been pretested to vary in their sexual and affective content.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSocioaffect Neurosci Psychol
April 2014
Background: Modulation of sexual desires is, in some cases, necessary to avoid inappropriate or illegal sexual behavior (downregulation of sexual desire) or to engage with a romantic partner (upregulation of sexual desire). Some have suggested that those who have difficulty downregulating their sexual desires be diagnosed as having a sexual 'addiction'. This diagnosis is thought to be associated with sexual urges that feel out of control, high-frequency sexual behavior, consequences due to those behaviors, and poor ability to reduce those behaviors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFViewing visual sexual stimuli (VSS) has been documented to have both positive (e.g., increased sexual arousal and sexual behaviors) and negative (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo theories of sexual risk taking (disinhibition and alcohol myopia) were tested using genital measures of sexual response and computer measures of sexual risk propensity. A total of 44 men and women completed two sessions comparing responses to erotic films while consuming alcohol (breath alcohol doses were .025 g/kg and .
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