Abstract
It is almost a cultural truism that erotic images attract our attention, presumably because paying attention to erotic stimuli provided our ancestors with mating benefits. Attention, however, can be narrowly defined as visuospatial attention (keeping such stimuli in view) or more broadly as cognitive attention (such stimuli taking up one’s thoughts). We present four independent studies aiming to test the extent to which erotic images have priority in capturing visuospatial versus cognitive attention. Whereas the former would show in quicker reactions to stimuli presented in locations where erotic images appeared previously, the latter causes delayed responding after erotic images, independent of their location). To this end, we specifically modified spatial cueing tasks to disentangle visuospatial attention capture from general sexual content-induced delay (SCID) effects—a major drawback in the previous literature. Consistently across all studies (total N = 399), we found no evidence in support of visuospatial attention capture but reliably observed an unspecific delay of responding for trials in which erotic images appeared (irrespective of cue location). This SCID is equally large for heterosexual men and women and reliably associated with their self-reported sexual excitability.
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Notes
As one analytic strategy one can subtract the latencies for centrally cued trials from the ones for validly and invalidly cued trials. Invalidly cued trials should then be positive (more delay than centrally cued trials) and validly cued trial should be negative (less delay than centrally cued trials). Such analyses were conducted for all studies, but for reasons of brevity and as they provide little additional information we do not report them in full detail here, but on the OSF project page.
Sexual and neutral stimuli did not differ in contrast, t(78) = 0.84, p = .399, but sexual stimuli were overall brighter M = 181.40, SD = 32.16, than neutral stimuli, M = 153.19, SD = 38.62, t(78) = − 3.55, p = .001. To control for this we included brightness as an additional factor in the omnibus ANOVAs of Studies 1a and 1b (by splitting each stimulus category in two halves of brighter vs. less bright stimuli). The main effect of sexual content remained intact in both studies (Study 1a: F(1, 49) = 47.97 η2p = .50, p < .001; Study 1b: F(1, 92) = 112.49, η2p = .55, p < .001), but there was no main effect of brightness (Study 1a: F(1, 49) = 0.64, η2p = .01, p = .430; Study 1b: F(1, 92) = 0.20, η2p = .00, p= .657). We also calculated an individual index of a brightness-induced delay to correlate it with the measured scales. There was neither a correlation with SES (Study 1a—SOA 250: r = .14, p = .319; Study 1a—SOA 1000: r = − .15, p = .295; Study 1b—SOA 250: r = .00, p = .971; Study 1b—SOA 1000: r = .01, p = .914), nor with any other measured scale (all ps > .05).
This video of a woman performing a sexual striptease was originally included to have a behavioral measure of sexual motivation. As participants were told they were not required to watch the whole video and could continue whenever they had seen enough we assumed that longer duration would indicate a greater motivation to get sexually aroused. Upon inspection of the results, however, it became apparent that virtually all participants had opted to watch the entire video, therefore offering almost no variability between participants. .
Mauchly’s test indicated violations of sphericity for the main effect of cue validity, χ²(2) = 13.66, p = .001, the interaction of cue validity with cue content, χ²(2) = 8.34, p = .015, as well as the interaction of cue validity with SOA, χ²(2) = 32.41, p < .001, that led to corrected degrees of freedom based on Greenhouse–Geisser estimates of sphericity; ɛ = .80, ɛ = .67, and ɛ = .86, respectively.
Greenhouse–Geisser corrected degrees of freedom, ɛ = .79, due to violation of sphericity assumption for cue validity, χ²(2) = 14.86, p = .001.
Greenhouse–Geisser corrected degrees of freedom, ɛ = .689, due to violation of sphericity assumption for cue validity, χ²(2) = 28.81, p < .001.
Greenhouse–Geisser corrected, ɛ = .89, due to significant Mauchly test, χ²(2) = 11.43, p = .003.
Greenhouse–Geisser corrected, ɛ = .79, due to significant Mauchly test, χ²(2) = 27.27, p < .001.
As for the previous stimulus sets, there was no difference in contrast, t(78) = 0.98, p = .330, but in brightness, t(78) = 4.63, p < .001. Opposite to the stimuli used in Studies 1a and 1b, however, sexual stimuli were less bright, M = 102.66, SD = 43.78, than neutral stimuli, M = 143.88, SD = 35.37. Entering brightness as a factor in the ANOVA again left the main effects of sexual content intact (Study 2: F(1, 159) = 62.03 η2p = .28, p < .001; Study 3: F(1, 91) = 4.23 η2p = .04, p = .043), but also yielded a main effect of brightness in Study 2, F(1, 159) = 20.79 η2p = .12, p < .001, but not Study 3, F(1, 91) = 0.25 η2p = .00, p = .621. An index of brightness-induced delay showed no correlation with SES (Study 2: r = .05, p = .537; Study 3: r = .07, p = 485), nor with any other measured scale (all ps > .05). The consistency of our findings concerning the SCID effect (despite opposite confounding of sexual content with brightness across studies) and the lack of correlation between scales and reactions to brightness speak against the notion that our finding might be resting on a spurious effect due to confounds with brightness.
Greenhouse–Geisser corrected, ɛ = .89, due to significant Mauchly test, χ²(2) = 20.75, p < .001.
Greenhouse–Geisser corrected, ɛ = .95, due to significant Mauchly test, χ²(2) = 9.35, p = .009.
Greenhouse–Geisser corrected, ɛ = .64, due to significant Mauchly test, χ² (2) = 72.41, p < .001.
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Acknowledgements
The reported research and preparation of this paper were supported by a DFG Grant (IM147/3-1) awarded to Roland Imhoff. All experimental scripts, raw and aggregated data as well as results of additional analyses can be found on the Open Science Framework under https://osf.io/6uqyv.
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Imhoff, R., Barker, P. & Schmidt, A.F. To What Extent Do Erotic Images Elicit Visuospatial versus Cognitive Attentional Processes? Consistent Support for a (Non-Spatial) Sexual Content-Induced Delay. Arch Sex Behav 49, 531–550 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-01512-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-01512-0