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

OCNC

• 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.

Acknowledgements

Georgia State UniversityDr. Kay Beck