For prepubertal youth, sexual stimuli elicit disgust and avoidance, yet in adolescence this avoidance shifts to sexual approach. One explanation could be that disgust declines in adolescence. This project examined whether disgust is indeed lower in adolescence compared to preadolescence, and whether this difference across age groups would be restricted to sex-relevant disgust elicitors. We also examined whether the strength of disgust would depend on familiarity between participant and source. To examine disgust responses in youths, two cross-sectional studies (N = 248, ages six to 17 years) were conducted using scenario-based measurements. Disgust was overall higher in early adolescence than in preadolescence and relatively weak when the source of disgust was a familiar person. Specifically, when parents were the source, sex-relevant disgust was higher in the groups of early and middle adolescents than in the group of preadolescents. Sex-relevant disgust elicited by a stranger or best friend, however, was lower in middle than in early adolescence. The latter is consistent with the view that repeated confrontation with disgusting stimuli might attenuate disgust, which could contribute to healthy sexual functioning. The heightened sex-relevant disgust in middle adolescents when parents were the source might reflect a functional avoidance mechanism of inappropriate sex mates.

Sexual motivation plays a crucial role in both normal sexual functioning as well as sexual dysfunctions. Although many self-report questionnaires exist to assess sexual motivation, their validity is restricted in that their sensitivity to experimental manipulation has not been tested and that they are subject to self-report limitations (e.g., self-representational issues). The aim of the current research is to develop and validate through experimental means a measure of sexual motivation based on the content analysis of imaginative stories that participants write about socially ambiguous pictures. In two studies (Study 1: N = 86; Study 2: N = 113), participants were randomly allocated to an erotic prime or control prime condition and took a picture-story test before and after the presentation of the primes. Subjective affect was assessed in both studies; physiological measures of affect (pupillometry, facial electromyography) and a criterion measure of sexual motivation (key-pressing for longer exposure to sexual vs. control pictures) only in Study 2. In both studies, erotically primed participants showed an increase of sexual imagery in picture stories compared to participants presented with control primes. In Study 2, this effect was mediated by physiological measures of affect and mediated in turn the effect on the behavioral criterion (viewing time for sexual pictures). We additionally report evidence for the discriminant, convergent, and incremental validity of need for sex.

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Introduction: Current information-processing models of sexual arousal imply that both controlled and automatic affective-motivational processes are critically involved in sexual responding and suggest that dysfunctional automatic processes may be involved in the development and persistence of sexual dysfunctions. Because (dysfunctional) automatic processes and responses cannot be adequately captured by common self-report measures, implicit performance-based measures have been developed to index these processes. Objectives: This review provides an overview of studies that used implicit tasks in clinical sexual research, and critically evaluates the contribution and promise of these measures to improve our understanding of the mechanisms involved in sexual dysfunctions. Methods: 6 electronic main databases (AMED, MEDLINE, PsycArticles, Psychology & Behavioral Sciences Collection, PsycINFO, and SocINDEX) were searched for studies involving implicit measurement techniques to measure automatic processes in clinical sex research. Results: A series of studies examined if lowered (or heightened) attention for sex stimuli may be involved in low sexual arousal, low desire, and genital pain. Preliminary evidence showed that lowered attention is involved in low sexual arousal. The pattern with regard to desire and genital pain was mixed which may be due to heterogeneity in assessment instruments. A limited number of studies examined automatic memory associations with sexual cues. Preliminary evidence showed negative (sex-threat/sex-disgust) associations in women with genito-pelvic pain or penetration disorder, less positive associations in women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder, and sex-positive and sex-failure associations in men with sexual distress. Thus far, no studies have examined lowered (or heightened) automatic sexual approach tendencies related to sexual dysfunctions. Conclusion: Implicit measures showed some promise as tools to index automatic sex-relevant cognitive mechanisms in sexual dysfunctions. Yet, more systematic research and the development of psychometrically sound measures are critical for a more comprehensive evaluation of the relevance of implicit measures in clinical sex research and their usefulness as indices of individual differences in clinical practice.

Replicating and extending previous work by Hinzmann et al. (submitted), the present research aimed at validating a picture-story measure of sexual motivation, termed need for sex (nSex). In two experimental studies (Ns = 154 and 171) with repeated-measures design, we showed that (a) nSex is sensitive to experimental manipulation of sexual motivation via film clips, (b) that this effect is mediated by increased subjective arousal as an indicator of a motivational process, and (c) that the part of nSex variance that is sensitive for experimental manipulation is also the one accounting for variations in a behavioral criterion (key pressing and viewing time measures of relative preference for erotic over non-erotic pictures). These effects emerged specifically when film clips portrayed sex positively, but not when they showed sex with embarrassing or threatening consequences. As a dispositional measure, nSex correlated positively with self-report measures of sexual desire and behavior. But it did not feature the sex difference associated with these measures and retained incremental validity above and beyond them for behavioral criterion measures.