attention to visual sexual stimuli: an eye tracking study heather rupp & kim wallen emory...
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Attention to Visual Sexual Stimuli: An Eye Tracking Study
Heather Rupp & Kim WallenEmory University
Department of PsychologyThe Center for Behavioral Neuroscience
Men and Women found sexual stimuli equally arousing, but showed different patterns of neural
activation
Hamann, Herman, Nolan, & Wallen, 2004
• Recruited via email and flyers from Emory University and Georgia State University graduate and professional schools.
• Heterosexual preference and some experience with pornography, aged 23-35.
• 15 males, 15 normal cycling women (NC), and 14 females on oral contraception (OC).
Subjects
• Collected from free sites on the internet.Activity• oral sex
to male to female
• intercourse Look zones• female face, male face, genitals, female body, male body, clothing, background
•Total of 72 photos viewed during each of 3 sessions counterbalanced across the females’ menstrual cycles.
Stimuli
• No sex difference in overall interest in the stimuli.• Viewing Time
Mean = 5.47 ± .33 secondsMales = 4.96
± .37NC Females = 5.25
± .70OC Females = 6.22
± .61
• Subjective Ratings (1-9)“How sexually attractive do you find this picture”
Mean = 6 ± .08Males = 6.21 ± .16
NC Females = 6.05 ± .12
OC Females = 5.75 ± .14
Results
Seven look zones occupied different average areas of the stimuli
Area
BackgroundFemale BodyMale body
Female FaceGenitals
OC FEMALES spent more time looking at the background
Clothing
Male Face
MALES and FEMALES spent different percentages of time in different look zones
OCNC
No difference in attention to the female bodyMALES spent less time looking at the male body than FEMALES MALES spent less time looking at the male body and more time looking at
the female face than FEMALES MALES spent less time looking at the male body and male face and more
time looking at the female face than FEMALES
NC FEMALES spent more time looking at the genitals than other groups
OC FEMALES spent more time looking at the background … and clothing
• No sex difference in measures of overall interest in the stimuli
• There were, however, sexually differentiated look zone biases
• Males: more attention to the female face
• NC Females: more attention to the genitals
• OC Females: more attention to the context- clothing and background
SUMMARY
Implications
• Males and females may alter their attention patterns to produce optimal, and equal, interest in visual sexual stimuli.
• Processing differences not always detectable with measurement of arousal endpoints.
• More work needs to examine the cognitive component of the response to visual sexual stimuli.