Transcript Attention to Visual Sexual Stimuli: An Eye Tracking Study Heather Rupp & Kim Wallen Emory University Department of Psychology The Center for Behavioral Neuroscience.

Attention to Visual Sexual Stimuli:
An Eye Tracking Study
Heather Rupp & Kim Wallen
Emory University
Department of Psychology
The Center for Behavioral Neuroscience
Men and Women found sexual stimuli equally
arousing, but showed different patterns of neural
activation
Hamann, Herman, Nolan, & Wallen, 2004
Subjects
• 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).
Stimuli
• 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.
Results
• No sex difference in overall interest in the stimuli.
• Viewing Time
Mean = 5.47 ± .33 seconds
Males =
4.96 ± .37
NC Females =
5.25 ± .70
OC Females =
6.22 ± .61
• Subjective Ratings (1-9)
“How sexually attractive do you find this picture”
Mean = 6 ± .08
Males =
6.21 ± .16
NC Females =
6.05 ± .12
OC Females =
5.75 ± .14
Seven look zones occupied different average areas of the stimuli
MALES
MALES
MALES
spent
MALES
spent
spent
less
less
and
time
less
time
FEMALES
time
looking
looking
looking
spent
at
atthe
the
atdifferent
male
male
the male
body
body
percentages
body
and
andmore
than
maleFEMALES
time
face
of time
looking
andinmore
at
No difference in attention to the female body
time looking
the female
different
at theface
female
look
than
face
zones
FEMALES
than FEMALES
NC FEMALES spent more time looking at the genitals than other groups
OCFEMALES
FEMALESspent
spentmore
moretime
timelooking
lookingat
atthe
thebackground
background
OC
… and clothing
Background
Female Body
Male body
Clothing
Genitals
Female Face
Male Face
Area
NC
OC
NC
OC
SUMMARY
•
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 contextclothing and background
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.
Acknowledgements
Georgia State University
Dr. Kay Beck