Influence of unrestrained access to erotica on adolescents' and young adults' dispositions toward sexuality.

Because consensually accepted programs of sexual education are lacking, erotica have come to serve as the primary agent of sexual socialization. The new media technology gives prepubertal children and postpubertal adolescents ready access to erotica in all their manifestations. However, next to nothing is known about the consequences of the steadily increasing amount of such exposure. A brief overview of what is known and what remains unknown about the effects of pornography on young adults is presented. Thereafter, the focus is on the development of sexual callousness across the pubertal threshold, and on how this callousness might be influenced by extensive exposure to erotica. The erotica under consideration are not so much those explicitly depicting coital behaviors as those that are less explicit and present a fuller social context of sexual engagements. A program of research is outlined that would help provide an understanding of erotica's effects on adolescents' sexual callousness, an understanding that is sorely needed for the construction of effective educational efforts aiming at the removal of callousness and coercion from sexual relations.

Drama-induced affect and pain sensitivity.

This study was conducted to examine the pain-ameliorating and pain-sensitizing effects of exposure to emotionally engaging drama. Specifically, the consequences for pain sensitivity of exposure to dramatic expositions differing in both excitatory and hedonic qualities were determined. Hedonically negative, neutral, and positive affective states were induced in male respondents by exposure to excerpts from cinematic drama. Pain sensitivity was assessed by the cuff-pressure procedure before and after exposure and by the cold pressor test after exposure only. When compared against the control condition, pain sensitivity diminished under conditions of hedonically positive affect. An inverse effect was suggested for hedonically negative conditions, but proved tentative and statistically unreliable. The findings are consistent with earlier demonstrations of mood effects on pain sensitivity. Unlike inconclusive earlier findings concerning the magnitude of directional effects, however, they suggest an asymmetry that emphasizes the pain-ameliorating effect of positive affects while lending little, if any, support to the proposal of a pain-sensitizing effect of negative affects. The investigation did not accomplish the intended creation of conditions necessary to test the proposal that heightened sympathetic activity diminishes pain sensitivity. The utility of a rigorous determination of this hypothesized relationship is emphasized, and procedures for a viable test of the proposal are suggested.

Exploring the relation between personality and the appreciation of rock music.

Scores on five personality characteristics, extraversion, neuroticism, and psychoticism as well as reactive and proactive rebelliousness, and the appreciation of soft/nonrebellious and hard/rebellious rock-music videotapes were explored. After completing the personality tests, female and male undergraduates were exposed to rock-music videotapes and asked to rate various aspects of their enjoyment of each. Analysis indicated that psychoticism and reactive rebelliousness were associated with enjoyment in a parallel fashion. Specifically, respondents scoring high on psychoticism or high on reactive rebelliousness enjoyed hard/rebellious rock-music videotapes more than did their peers scoring low on psychoticism or low on reactive rebelliousness. The reverse was evident for the enjoyment of soft/nonrebellious rock-music videotapes. In contrast, scores on extraversion, neuroticism, and proactive rebelliousness were not associated with enjoyment. Gender differences emerged, however; women (n = 78) enjoyed soft/nonrebellious rock music more than did men (n = 60); and conversely, men enjoyed hard/rebellious rock music more than did women.

Menstrual cycle variation of women's interest in erotica.

Female respondents were given the opportunity to choose feature films for viewing. Choices were made on the basis of synopses and promotional videos. These materials projected (i) a focus on erotic, sexual events, (ii) romantic themes, (iii) action-packed violent drama, and (iv) hilarious comedy. Additionally, respondents evaluated the appeal of the projected films. Respondents' position in the menstrual cycle was then determined, with placement into one of seven 4-day phases. Measured in both choices and evaluations, a postmenstrual surge in erotic interest was evident. Erotic interest was also pronounced prior to and during menses. In contrast, it was at a minimum during the first half of the luteal phase. The choice of romantic films was not appreciably influenced by cycle position. However, in evaluating films with romantic themes, premenstrual women expressed particularly little interest in this genre.

Effect of humor and tragedy on discomfort tolerance.

Following exposure to comedy, tragedy, or control stimuli, respondents took the cold pressor test. Men, but not women (ns = 36), tolerated icy water for longer periods of time after comedy and tragedy than after control stimuli.

Effect of alcoholic intoxication on the appreciation of different types of humor.

Male subjects were placed into one of three intoxication conditions (no ethanol, low dose, high dose) and were exposed to humorous segments from television programs. During manifest intoxication or the corresponding period in the no-intoxication control condition, they were exposed, in a balanced order, to a segment containing blunt (i.e., unsophisticated, raw) humor and to a segment containing subtle (i.e., sophisticated, refined) humor. Subjects' facial reactions to the humorous stimuli were unobtrusively recorded and later analyzed by judges who were naive about the experimental conditions. Subjects also rated the funniness of the segments. The perceived funniness of blunt humor was found to increase with ethanol intoxication. For subtle humor, in contrast, perceived funniness was found to decrease with intoxication. This divergent interaction of reported humor appreciation was less apparent in the analysis of facial expressiveness. Although correlations between ratings and aspects of facial expression were generally positive, clearly corroborative support for the humor appraisals was found only in the frequency of smiles in response to subtle humor.

Relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness and physiological responses to films.

Subject's physiological responses and rated reactions to a medical film and an erotic film were assessed. Later cardiovascular fitness levels were determined by subject's physiological responses to an exercise task. The greater the increase in the subject's systolic blood pressure after exercise and the slower the recovery, the lower the fitness level. A median split on the fitness scores of males and females separately was used to determine levels of relatively low and high fitness. Subjects in low fitness had significantly greater sympathetic-arousal responses to the two films as measured in systolic blood-pressure increases and skin-temperature decreases. Subjects in the two fitness levels did not differ in ratings of their own physiological or emotional responses to the films. Reported interoception of the magnitude of physiological responses was inaccurate, especially for subjects in low fitness.

What mediates the effect of mild erotica on annoyance and hostile behavior in males?

Male subjects were provoked or not provoked, exposed to photographs of (a) nonerotica, (b) nude females, or (c) couples engaged in sexual activities, and provided with an opportunity to express annoyance and to retaliate against their annoyer. Both annoyance and retaliatory behavior were measured. The excitatory potential, the involvement potential, and the hedonic valence of the nonerotic and erotic stimuli were also assessed. Provocation produced strong effects on all measures of annoyance and retaliatory behavior. In unprovoked subjects, erotica had no effect whatsoever on such behavior. Under conditions of provocation, reported annoyance in both erotica conditions was significantly less than in nonerotic condition. There was no corresponding differentiation in retaliatory behavior, however. The excitatory potential of the erotica employed, as measured in heart-rate and blood-pressure changes, proved to be minimal. No stimulus differences in involvement potential were found. The erotica were similarly pleasing. The nonerotica, in contrast, were conisdered boring. The findings are discussed in terms of various theoretical proposals concerning the relationship between erotica and aggression.

Enhancement of experienced sexual arousal in response to erotic stimuli through misattribution of unrelated residual excitation.

In a pretest, three phases of recovery from a standard physical exercise were determined. In Phase 1, subjects experienced high levels of physiological excitation and recognized that their arousal was due to exercise. In Phase 2, subjects maintained substantial excitatory residues from the exercise but felt that their arousal had returned to base level. In Phase 3, subjects' excitatory responses had decayed, and they knew they had recovered from the exercise. Subjects in the main experiment were exposed to an erotic film in the first, second, or third recovery phase after performing the exercise. Subjects viewing the film during the second recovery phase reported being more sexually aroused by the film and evaluated the film more positively than subjects in the other two conditions. Counter to the notion of arousal as a simple energizer of all behavior, these findings were interpreted as supporting excitation-transfer theory, which posits that residual excitation enhances emotional responses to unrelated, immediately present stimuli only when the prevailing arousal cannot be attributed to its actual source.