The Influence of Olfactory Disgust on (Genital) Sexual Arousal in Men

DOI

Abstract Background The generation or persistence of sexual arousal may be compromised when inhibitory processes such as negative emotions, outweigh sexual excitation. Disgust particularly, has been proposed as one of the emotions that may counteract sexual arousal. In support of this view, previous research has shown that disgust priming can reduce subsequent sexual arousal. As a crucial next step, this experimental study tested whether disgust (by means of odor) can also diminish sexual arousal in individuals who are already in a state of heightened sexual excitation. Methodology In this study, participants were all men (N = 78). To elicit sexual arousal, participants watched a pornographic video. Following 4.30 minutes from the start of the video clip, they were exposed to either a highly aversive/disgusting odor (n = 42), or a neutral odor (n = 36), that was delivered via an olfactometer, while the pornographic video continues. In both conditions the presentation of the odor lasted 1 second and was repeated 11 times with intervals of 26 seconds. Sexual arousal was indexed by both self-reports and penile circumference. Principal Findings The disgusting odor (released when the participants were already sexually aroused) resulted in a significant decrease of both subjective and genital sexual arousal compared to the neutral odor. Significance The finding that the inhibitory effect of disgust was not only expressed in self-report but also expressed on the penile response further strengthens the idea that disgust might hamper behavioral actions motivated by sexual arousal (e.g., poor judgment, coercive sexual behavior). Thus, the current findings indicate that exposure to an aversive odor is sufficiently potent to reduce already present (subjective and) genital sexual arousal. This finding may also have practical relevance for disgust to be used as a tool for self-defence (e.g., Invi Bracelet).

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.34894/TTP1FC
Metadata Access https://dataverse.nl/oai?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=doi:10.34894/TTP1FC
Provenance
Creator Borg, Charmaine; Oosterwijk, Tamara; Lisy, Dominika; Boesvelt, Sanne; De Jong, Peter
Publisher DataverseNL
Contributor Research Data Office; University of Groningen
Publication Year 2018
Rights CC0 Waiver; info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess; https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact Research Data Office (University of Groningen)
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet; application/x-spss-sav; application/x-spss-syntax
Size 23104; 40357; 14811
Version 2.0
Discipline Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture; Agriculture, Forestry, Horticulture, Aquaculture and Veterinary Medicine; Life Sciences; Social Sciences; Social and Behavioural Sciences; Soil Sciences
Spatial Coverage Groningen