Disgust and Sexual Arousal in Young Adult Men and Women

Abstract

Previous research suggested that disgust may interfere with healthy sexual functioning by demonstrating that women with sexual pain disorders are characterized by heightened disgust propensity, relatively strong (physiological and subjective) disgust responses when exposed to sexual stimuli, and relatively strong automatic sex-disgust memory associations. To broaden the understanding of the relationship between sex and disgust, Study 1 tested the relationship between trait disgust and sexual functioning in both men (N = 109) and women (N = 187), and showed that specifically for women both relatively high disgust propensity and high sensitivity were related to lower sexual functioning. Study 2 focused on healthy young adults (N = 19 men and N = 24 women), and tested the relationship between trait disgust and automatic sex-disgust associations as well as the predictive value of trait disgust propensity for participants' level of sexual arousal while watching an erotic video. Participants completed a single-target Implicit Association Task and self-report measures of trait disgust propensity, disgust sensitivity, and sexual functioning. Furthermore, genital and subjective sexual arousal was measured, while participants were watching neutral and erotic video clips. Women showed stronger sex-disgust associations and reported higher disgust propensity than men. Overall, indices of trait disgust and sex-disgust associations were not strongly associated with sexual functioning or sexual arousability. Unexpectedly, specifically in men, high levels of trait disgust sensitivity predicted higher levels of genital and subjective sexual arousal. Overall, no strong evidence was found to support the view that, among young adults without sexual difficulties, high trait disgust or relatively strong automatic sex-disgust associations are associated with low sexual functioning and low sexual arousal.

Correlational and experimental analyses of the relation between disgust and sexual arousal

“…Disgust may achieve this through multiple potential mechanisms in the current experiment. Similar to recent correlational findings (Grauvogl et al, 2014), disgust primes may have increased sexual arousal as the experiment progressed. While the initial effect of disgust on subjective sexual arousal may be inhibitory, disgust may subsequently increase sexual arousal as physiological responding to disgust cues increases.…”

“…Some evidence also suggests a negative relation between sexual functioning and pathogen disgust propensity, but this evidence has almost exclusively examined the context of vaginal pain difficulties among women of predominately European descent (Borg et al, 2010; Borg et al, 2011). Similarly, recent evidence suggests disgust sensitivity and disgust propensity positively predict orgasm and sexual pain difficulties among women, but not men (Grauvogl et al, 2014). …”

“…Unlike the proposed relation between disgust and sexual arousal, anxiety appears to enhance psychological sexual arousal among men, and physiological sexual arousal among both men and women (Barlow, Sackheim, & Beck, 1983; Dutton & Aron, 1974; Hoon, Wincze, & Hoon, 1977; Pallace & Gorzalka, 1990; Wolchik et al, 1980). Initial correlational evidence suggests a similar relation between the trait-like qualities of disgust and sexual arousal (Grauvogl et al, 2014). Although the study included a relatively small sample ( n men = 19, n women = 24), disgust sensitivity and disgust propensity both correlated positively with psychological and physiological sexual arousal for men.…”

Moral and Sexual Disgust Suppress Sexual Risk Behaviors among Men Who Have Sex with Men in China

“…Previous studies have indicated an association between disgust and sexual arousal (de Jong et al, 2010; Stevenson et al, 2011; Borg and de Jong, 2012; Lee et al, 2014; Grauvogl et al, 2015). Among men, high levels of trait pathogen disgust sensitivity predicted higher levels of genital and subjective sexual arousal (Lee et al, 2014; Grauvogl et al, 2015). It seems that MSM individuals with high levels of pathogen disgust sensitivity are more likely to be sexually aroused and thus will have more casual sexual partners to release sexual arousal.…”

Gaming for safer sex

“…Second, our experimental setup did not allow us to use physiological methods to measure participants' level of sexual arousal. Instead, we relied on self-report measures that have been shown to only weakly (Chivers et al, 2010) or even negatively (Grauvogl et al, 2015) correlate with genital measures of sexual arousal, such as vaginal pulse amplitudes. In fact, self-reported sexual arousal may reflect more of a higher-order conscious appraisal of sexual cues, and therefore be more open to personal influences such as the cultural meaning of particular sexual cues, as compared to genital measurements that may represent faster and more unconscious information processing (Janssen, Everaerd, Spiering, & Janssen, 2000;Janssen, Prause, & Geer, 2007).…”