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

Recruited via and flyers from Emory University and Georgia State University graduate and professional schools. Heterosexual preference and some experience with pornography, aged 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 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 Results

Seven look zones occupied different average areas of the stimuli Area Background Female Body Male body Female Face Genitals OC FEMALES spent more time looking at the background Clothing Male Face MALES and FEMALES spent different percentages of time in different look zones OC NC No difference in attention to the female body MALES spent less time looking at the male body than FEMALESMALES 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

OC NC

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 University Dr. Kay Beck