Is sex a state of mind? A recent study from the University of
British Columbia finds that while most men can regulate their physical
and mental sexual arousal to some degree, the men most able to do so
are able to control their other emotions as well.
"We suspect
that if an individual is good at regulating one type of emotional
response, he/she is probably good at regulating other emotional
responses," says Jason Winters, the study's research head. "This has
never been shown before."
The study employed 16 randomly ordered
video clips. Eight were erotic, and eight were funny (specifically, the
funny video clips featured the least sexy comedian the researchers
could find: Mitch Hedberg). Participants were instructed to control
their response to certain videos, and simply to watch the others. They
then rated their arousal following each clip, and were hooked up to
machines that measured their erections.
Researchers wanted to know: Could men control sexual arousal, fooling both themselves and others?
"I'm trained in forensic psychology, and the original plan was to do this study with sexual offenders," Winters tells LiveScience. "However, I needed to first establish that there is range of sexual arousal regulation abilities in the general male population."
Indeed,
participants were, on average, able to regulate their physiological
sexual arousal when told to do so; in fact, they showed a 25 percent
reduction in erectile response. "This is consistent with success rates
from previous, well-controlled [measuring-device] faking studies in
which success rates range from 26 to 38 percent," Winters writes in his
study.
The range of regulation abilities had nothing to do with age, sexual experience,
or sexual compulsivity. However, sexual excitation, inhibition, and
desire were related to regulation success: Men who were more easily
excited were, unsurprisingly, less able to regulate; guys who tended to
be sexually inhibited because of performance issues were better able to
stave off an erection.
Furthermore, the study found that the men
who were best able to control their response to the pornographic videos
were also able to control their response to Mitch Hedberg. But for
those who had difficulty regulating, reverse psychology could be to
blame.
"The finding that was most surprising was that some men became more sexually aroused
when they tried to regulate their sexual arousal," Winters says. "In
other words, they responded more strongly (both physiologically and
self-reported) during trials in which they attempted to regulate their
arousal than trials during which they merely watched the stimuli. We
attributed this increased response to anxiety - in this case, demand
anxiety. It's sort of like when you tell someone not to think of a
white elephant; those [who] are most anxious during the task have the
most trouble not thinking about the white elephant."
The study's findings could have significant implications.
"The
next step is to do a similar study with sexual offenders," Winters
says. "I suspect that sexual offenders will generally be very poor
regulators, and that poor regulation is one of the factors that
contributes to their offending."
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