Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety.

Abstract

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

Affective Influences on Evaluative Processing

“…In our experiments, we examined a relatively narrow slice of the taxonomic pie, finding that the type of positive affect manipulated (incidental vs. integral, and relatively feeling vs. thinking based) appears to make little difference on processing effects, relative to the influence of affect valence. This, however, may not be sur-prising given individuals' inability to accurately detect the source of their affective states (e.g., Cantor, Zillmann, and Bryant 1975;Dutton and Aron 1974;Schwarz and Clore 1983). Individuals are especially likely to be unaware (and misattribute) the source of their affective arousal when the arousal source is not salient and when the arousal itself is relatively moderate (Gorn, Pham, and Sin 2001;Payne et al 2010;Vosgerau 2010).…”

fMRI Evidence of a Hot-Cold Empathy Gap in Hypothetical and Real Aversive Choices

“…Hence, one future direction is to manipulate amygdala or insula activity by using such stimuli during hypothetical choice. The idea is that stimulation of such regions by external stimuli might "fool" the neural circuitry into making judgments as if it is in a hot state (as in classic arousal misattribution, e.g., Dutton and Aron, 1974). Inducing an artificial hot state could produce hypothetical choices that are better forecasts of actual real choices.…”

Attraction increases and decreases as a function of emotion-attribution and appropriate social cues

“…It was in order to provide the missing converging evidence for the emotion-misattribution explanation that Study VI was developed. It was hypothesized that if the misattribution explanation of the arousal-attraction relation were valid, that relationship should be weakened with the passage of a short span of time, just as was apparently the case in the second study of the Dutton and Aron (1974) research. Specifically, it was hypothesized that in a study in which all the male subjects experienced startle-induced arousal, the imposition of a 10-minute relaxation period following the startle would reduce the attraction ratings given the attractive female experimenter relative to aroused subjects who experienced the 10-minute relaxation before being startled.…”

“…For example, if the arousal were caused by the close approach of a stranger, negative labeling and negative reactions would occur, while if the arousal were caused by the approach of an attractive other, positive reactions would occur. l Dutton and Aron (1974) conducted research that relates to the arousalattraction model as developed by Patterson, although the major dependent variables in the first two studies relate to sexual content of stories rather than to attraction per se. In the first of a series of three studies, males who visited either a frightening narrow suspension bridge or a less frightening bridge over the same scenic river were confronted by either a male or a female experimenter who asked the subjects to tell stories in response to TAT cards.…”