Feb 19 2010
Human Sexuality and How Questionnaires Can Fail
Last month news of a very interesting study hit my desk. (And subsequently got lost under a stack of papers.) Upon re-reading the article from ScienceDaily this morning it struck me that one of the things the study into human sexuality revealed is that there can be a disconnect between what individuals honestly report and what is actually the case. Self-report questionnaires can be flawed because people do not have perfect knowledge of themselves. In the study in question, the inquiry was into “what turns you on?”
In a meta-analysis of 134 sexual psychophysiology studies, researchers looked at the correlation between subjective reports of sexual arousal vs. physiologic response. And they found an imperfect correlation.
For the male participants, the subjective ratings more closely matched the physiological readings indicating that men’s minds and genitals were in agreement. For the women, however, the responses of the mind and genitals were not as closely matched as men’s, suggesting a split between women’s bodies and minds. The readings from the physiological measurements and their subjective ratings were, in some cases, significantly different.
The above, it should be noted, flies in the face of the popular stereotype about men being the more psychologically clueless sex. Certainly, it is a complicated issue, one that doesn’t readily boil down to “girls are better than boys . . . no, boys are better than girls!”
Also noteworthy was this finding:
The type of sexual stimuli — their content and how it was presented e.g. visually or as an audio recording — made no difference to how well the subjective and physiological responses mirrored each other in men. However, it did influence women’s responses. Women exposed to a greater range and number of sexual stimuli — content and presentation — were more likely to have stronger agreement between subjective and physiological responses.
Sexual arousal aside–well, integral, actually–human psychology is complex and multi-faceted. Many of those facets aren’t readily accessible to conscious awareness and/or honest subjective appraisal. To the philosophical dictum “know thyself” I would thus add, “and realize there are limits to your self-knowledge.”
[...] a recent post, Human Sexuality and How Questionnaires Can Fail, I concluded this [...]
In my own experience I am psychologically easily aroused by pictures etc but physical arousal tends to be unattainable unless I’m in actual contact with another person. (It’s really very annoying since I’m in a long-distance relationship!) So personally I am willing to believe that the subjects are not in fact wrong about themselves — they’re just not answering the question the researchers think they should be answering.
For good measure I’ll wave my hands and rationalize the result: Physical arousal in women serves the additional purpose of reducing injuries in the case of rape, so it makes sense for it to be triggered by a different set of stimuli than psychological arousal.