The Great Porn Experiment V2.0

Sexual Arousal Reduces the Salience of Familiar Women When Heterosexual Men Judge Their Attractiveness

Bibliographic Data

ID21292354
AuthorsJordan Sculley (Abertay University), Christopher D Watkins (0000-0002-1207-6331, Abertay University, corresponding author)
Year2022
Volume51
Issue6
Pages3071-3082
Publication date2022-08-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueArchives of Sexual Behavior (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0004-0002 • E-ISSN: 1573-2800
PublisherSpringer Science and Business Media LLC (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1007/s10508-022-02317-4
PMID35790609
OpenAlexW4284662880
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited66

Pornography has become widely accessible in recent years due to its integration with the Internet, generating social scientific and moralistic debate on potential “media effects,” given correlations between consumption and various sexual traits and behaviors. One popular public debate (Wilson, 2012) claimed that exposure to Internet pornography has addictive qualities that could impact men’s sexual relationships, underpinned by the “Coolidge effect,” where males are sexually motivated by the presence of novel mates. As claims about Internet and sexual addictions are scientifically controversial, we provide a direct experimental test of his proposal. Adapting a paradigm used to examine “Coolidge-like” effects in men, we examined the extent to which exposure to images of pornographic actresses altered men’s attractiveness ratings of (1) familiar faces/bodies on second viewing and (2) familiar versus novel women’s faces/bodies. Independent of slideshow content (pornographic versus clothed versions of same actress), heterosexual men were less attracted to familiar bodies, and homosexual men were less attracted to familiar women (faces and bodies), suggesting that mere visual exposure to attractive women moderated men’s preferences. However, consistent with one of our preregistered predictions, heterosexual but not homosexual men’s preferences for familiar versus novel women were moderated by slideshow content such that familiar women were less salient on the attractiveness dimension compared to novel women when sexual arousal was greater (pornographic versus clothed slideshows). In sum, our findings demonstrate that visual exposure/sexual arousal moderates attractiveness perceptions, albeit that much greater nuance is required considering earlier claims

Arousal · Attractiveness · Cognitive psychology · Developmental psychology · Physical attractiveness · Psychoanalysis · Salience (neuroscience) · Sexual arousal · Sexual attraction · Sexual behavior · Sexual orientation · Evolutionary Psychology and Human Behavior · Gender, Feminism, and Media · Psychology · Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology · Social Psychology

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