Heightened Sexual Attraction Under Conditions of High Anxiety
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SOME EVIDENCE FOR HEIGHTENED SEXUAL
ATTRACTION UNDER CONDITIONS
OF HIGH ANXIETY
Male passersby were contacted either on a fear-arousing suspension bridge
or a non-fear-arousing bridge by an attractive female interviewer who asked
them to fill out questionnaires containing Thematic Apperception Test pictures.
Sexual content of stories written by subjects on the fear-arousing bridge and
tendency of these subjects to attempt postexperimental contact with the interviewer
were both significantly greater. No significant differences between
bridges were obtained on either measure for subjects contacted by a male
interviewer. A third study manipulated anticipated shock to male subjects
and an attractive female confederate independently. Anticipation of own shock
but not anticipation of shock to confederate increased sexual imagery scores
on the Thematic Apperception Test and attraction to the confederate. Some
theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
There is a substantial body of indirect evidence
suggesting that sexual attractions occur
with increased frequency during states of
strong emotion. For example, heterosexual
love has been observed to be associated both
with hate (James, 1910; Suttie, 193S) and
with pain (Ellis, 1936). A connection between
"aggression" and sexual attraction is
supported by Tinbergen's (1954) observations
of intermixed courting and aggression
behaviors in various animal species, and a
series of experiments conducted by Barclay
have indicated the existence of a similar phenomenon
in human behavior. In one study,
Barclay and Haber (196S) arranged for students
in one class to be angered by having
their professor viciously berate them for having
done poorly on a recent test; another
class served as a control. Subsequently, both
groups were tested for aggressive feelings and
for sexual arousal. A manipulation check was
successful, and the angered group manifested
signfiicantly more sexual arousal than did
controls (p < .01) as measured by explicit
sexual content in stories written in response
1 This research was supported by University of
British Columbia Research Committee Grant 26 9840
to the first author and National Research Council
Postdoctoral Fellowship 1560 to the second author.
2 Requests for reprints should be sent to Donald
G. Dutton, Department of Psychology, University
of British Columbia, Vancouver 8, British Columbia,
Canada,
to Thematic Apperception Test (TAT)-like
stimuli. Similar results were obtained in two
further studies (Barclay, 1969, 1970) in
which fraternity and sorority members were
angered by the experimenter. The 1970 study
employed a female experimenter, which demonstrated
that the aggression-sexual arousal
link was not specific to male aggression; the
1969 study provided additional support for
the hypothesis by using a