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Some don't like it hot: Genital and subjective sexual arousal in response to copulatory movements of various animal species

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2022

Abstract

Gynephilic women show genitally react to erotic video stimuli depicting preferred sex, preferred sex, and even other animal species. Here we test whether specific sex-related activity - copulatory movements (CM) - is the main sexual cue and elicitor of genital response.

Fifty-eight (28 females, mean age 27.41, sd = 7.32) heterosexuals were presented with eleven 60 seconds long video stimuli containing CM in randomized order, altering with distractors. Their genital (penile and vaginal plethysmography, PPG/VPG) and subjective (9-point scale) arousal was measured.

PPG/VPG: Mixed model ANOVA revealed an effect of stimulus type (ω2 = 0.35). No difference in responses between men and women (ω2 = 0).

Subjective arousal: There was the effect of stimulus type (ω2 = 0.72). Men rated human stimuli as more sexually arousing than women.

We observed a significant correlation between the genital and subjective responses for both sexes, r = .54, p < 0.001, 95% CI [.48, .59].