Effects of Alcohol Intoxication and Instructional Set on Women’s Sexual Arousal Vary Based on Sexual Abuse History

Abstract

The influence of alcohol intoxication and arousal instructional set on psychophysiological measures of sexual responding was examined in a non-clinical sample of sexually abused (SA) and non-sexually abused (NSA) women. Participants (n=42) were randomly assigned to consume alcoholic (target blood alcohol level = .08%) or non-alcoholic drinks and to receive instructions to maximize or suppress their sexual response to erotic films. Measures included vaginal pulse amplitude (VPA), self-reported sexual arousal, and mood. SA classification interacted with instruction condition such that NSA women's VPA scores were higher under maximize than suppress instructions, but this did not occur for SA women. SA classification interacted with alcohol such that, compared to their sober counterparts, intoxicated NSA women reported less sexual arousal, whereas intoxicated SA women reported more sexual arousal than their sober counterparts. Moreover, positive mood ratings were highest among intoxicated SA women. Findings indicate that alcohol may affect women differently based on SA history and imply that SA history may be associated with differences in response to subsequent sexual situations.

The Effect of Pre-Existing Affect on the Sexual Responses of Women With and Without a History of Childhood Sexual Abuse

“…For Hypothesis 1, we expected to replicate prior studies that found lower physiological sexual arousal but not lower subjective sexual arousal to erotic video stimuli in women with a history of CSA compared to women with no history of sexual abuse (Laan & Everaerd, 1995;Schacht et al, 2007). For Hypothesis 2, we expected that, compared to the NSA group, the CSA group would report greater negative affect prior to exposure to erotic stimuli (pre-existing negative affect).…”

“…For example, women with a history of CSA report more problems becoming mentally sexually aroused and maintaining sexual arousal during sexual activities with a partner (DiLillo, 2001;Leonard & Follette, 2002;Meston, Rellini, & Heiman, 2006). In addition, psychophysiological studies have found smaller genital responses to sexual stimuli in women with as compared to women without a history of CSA (Laan & Everaerd, 1995;Schacht et al, 2007). The current empirical literature provides little insight into the mechanisms underlying such impaired responses in women with a history of CSA.…”

“…In particular, Hypothesis 4 proposed the mediation of preexisting affect in the relationship between CSA and sexual responses would be supported if we found evidence that CSA was associated with more negative pre-existing affect and if preexisting affect explained the difference in physiological sexual arousal between the CSA and the NSA groups. This hypothesis was based on findings that women with a history of CSA have smaller sexual arousal compared to women with no history of abuse (Laan & Everaerd, 1995;Leonard & Follette, 2002;Schacht et al, 2007), on evidence that negative affect can impair sexual responses (Barlow, 1986), and on evidence that women with a history of CSA have greater negative affectivity (Chorpita & Barlow, 1998). However, it is also feasible that negative affect may not be associated with CSA and that affect prior to exposure to sexual stimuli is only a minor problem compared to the more severe and pervasive changes that women with a history of CSA endured in their sexual lives.…”

Indirect Effects of Acute Alcohol Intoxication on Sexual Risk-taking: The Roles of Subjective and Physiological Sexual Arousal

“…Movement artifacts revealed through visual inspection were removed from waveform data, which were then reduced to 30-second base-to-peak millivolt means. Following digital transformation, remaining movement artifacts, defined as a 100% increase or decrease in VPA relative to the adjacent 30-second intervals, were smoothed by averaging the values of the adjacent intervals (Schacht et al, 2007). Self-reported sexual arousal (α = .95) and risk taking (α = .75) were measured reliably with Study 2 scales using the same 7-point and 5-point Likert-type scales (respectively).…”

“…Identical analytic strategies were used in Experiments 2 and 3 with one exception. Genital response during the sexual risk-taking vignette was computed by subtracting women's lowest achieved VPA during the neutral stimulus from their highest achieved VPA during the risk-taking vignette to yield a VPA difference score (Rellini & Meston, 2006;Schacht et al, 2007). All paths that are drawn were tested, χ 2 (1) = .039, p = .844, CFI = 1.000, TLI = 1.299, RMSEA = 0.000, SRMR = 0.004; only those in bold were significant.…”