Category: Sex

Dating, Gender, Qualitative, Sex June 20, 2017

What is it like to be the partner of someone who is transgender?

The experiences of people who’ve been through a gender transition have been studied and analysed by psychologists – showing, for example, improved psychological wellbeing and self-esteem after hormone treatment. But when it comes to their partners, there’s been much less research. According to a new study in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, though, they often go through a kind of life transition of their own, and while there are certainly challenges, there are often positive changes, too.

Continue reading “What is it like to be the partner of someone who is transgender?” →

Brain, Forensic, Methods, Sex March 28, 2017

Psychologists are working on a fraud-proof brain scan test of deviant sexual interest

By Christian Jarrett

If the courts wanted to know if a suspected sex offender was attracted to children, they could ask him or her, or they could ask experts to measure signs of the suspect’s sexual arousal while he or she looked at different images. But a devious suspect would surely lie about their interests, and they could distract themselves to cheat the physical test.

Brain scans offer an alternative strategy: research shows that when we look at images that we find sexually attractive, our brains show distinct patterns of activation. But of course, the same issues of cheating and deliberate distraction could apply.

Unless, that is, you could somehow prevent the suspect from knowing what images they were looking at, by using subliminal stimuli that can’t be seen at a conscious level. Then you could see how their brain responds to different types of image without the suspect even knowing what they were looking at.

This is the essence of a strategy tested in a new paper in Consciousness and Cognition. Martina Wernicke at Asklepios Forensic Psychiatric Hospital of Gottingen and her colleagues have provided a partial proof of principle that it might one day be possible to use subliminally presented images in a brain scanner to provide a fraud-proof test of a person’s sexual interests. It’s a potentially important break-through for crime prevention – given that deviant sexual interest is one of the strongest predictors of future offences – but it also raises important ethical questions.

Continue reading “Psychologists are working on a fraud-proof brain scan test of deviant sexual interest” →

Sex February 27, 2017April 3, 2017

It’s all the cuddling – psychologists explore why people who have more sex are happier

By Christian Jarrett

An impressive amount of research has linked frequency of sex with greater happiness. One study even put a monetary estimate on it. They said that the happiness spurt from having sex once a week compared with monthly is similar to the boost you’d get from earning an extra $50,000 a year (though for anything more frequent than weekly sex, the benefits seemed to tail off).

Asking if and why more sex makes us happier may sound like asking the blindingly obvious, but of course a lot of pleasurable activities don’t have long-term emotional benefits; it’s also tricky to rule out the simple alternative possibility that we’re more likely to have sex if we’re happy.

In a series of studies in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, psychologists in Switzerland and Canada have looked beyond the immediate bliss that sex can bring, and they say that the main reason that more sex seems to contribute to greater long-term happiness is because of all the cuddling (and other expressions of affection) that’s involved, both at the time, and for hours afterwards.

In Talking It Over, Julian Barnes writes that “Love is just a system for getting someone to call you darling after sex”; this new research suggests that sex is a system for getting someone you love to call you darling, and to give you a big cuddle.

Continue reading “It’s all the cuddling – psychologists explore why people who have more sex are happier” →

evolutionary psych, Gender, Health, Mental health, Sex February 14, 2017February 14, 2017

Where do women look when sizing each other up?

By Christian Jarrett

Studies show that when heterosexual women look at other women’s bodies, they, just like men, tend to spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at their waists, hips and breasts, as if estimating how much they will appeal to men. This is consistent with “mate selection theory” which argues, among other things, that women have evolved strategies to monitor potential love rivals. However, psychologists are interested in this topic, not only from an evolutionary perspective, but also because women who feel dissatisfied with their bodies, and who are vulnerable to developing eating disorders, may be especially pre-occupied with comparing their body against others, potentially exacerbating their anxieties.

Past research is mixed: some studies suggest women with body dissatisfaction and/or eating disorders pay disproportionate attention to the bodies of thin women, other studies suggest the opposite. A new exploratory paper in Psychological Research says hang on a minute, we don’t actually know much about how healthy, confident women behave when they look at other women, nor whether their attention is influenced by their feelings about their own bodies.

Continue reading “Where do women look when sizing each other up?” →

In Brief, Sex December 21, 2016December 21, 2016

Men think women will be impressed by a tattoo, but they’re not – Polish study

By Alex Fradera

Men with tattoos are likely to provide serious competition for a woman’s attention, at least in the eyes of other guys, but women themselves actually aren’t that impressed. That’s according to research published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, where 2584 heterosexual men and women from Poland viewed photos of shirtless men, sometimes digitally modified so that their arm was emblazoned with a smallish black tattoo depicting a generic symbol. The 215 men among the participants rated the inked bods as more attractive than tattoo-free comparison models, which presumably reflects in part what they think women are looking for in an ideal male partner. But the female participants didn’t rate the tattooed gentlemen as more attractive; moreover, they considered them worse prospects as partners and parents.

Women did rate tattooed men as healthier, which researchers Andrzej Galbarczyk and Anna Ziomkiewicz think might be because tattooing is a costly signal of strong health, involving as it does a painful experience and risk of infection. Normally, perceived health correlates with perceived attractiveness, but this positive connotation of the tattoos might have been counteracted by the fact the women also associated the tats with masculinity and aggression: not such a positive thing if you consider that another marker of masculinity, high testosterone, is known to be associated with affairs and higher risk of assault on a partner. All in all, the women’s judgments were swayed by the (admittedly small) tattoos far less than were the male participants’ judgments. Heterosexual men who are planning a trip to their local tattoo parlour might be surprised to learn from this research that their new ink is likely to cause a bigger stir among the gentlemen than the ladies.

—Tattooed men: Healthy bad boys and good-looking competitors

Alex Fradera (@alexfradera) is Contributing Writer at BPS Research Digest

evolutionary psych, Replications, Sex December 12, 2016January 4, 2017

Wardrobe malfunction – three failed attempts to replicate the finding that red increases attractiveness

By Christian Jarrett

It’s one of the simplest, most evidence-backed pieces of advice you can give to someone who’s looking to attract a partner – wear red. Many studies, most of them involving men rating women’s appearance, have shown that wearing red clothing increases attractiveness and sex appeal. The reasons are thought to be traceable to our evolutionary past – red displays in the animal kingdom also often indicate sexual interest and availability – complemented by the cultural connotations of red with passion and sex.

But nothing, it seems, is straightforward in psychology any more. A team of Dutch and British researchers has just published three attempts to replicate the red effect in the open-access journal Evolutionary Psychology, including testing whether the effect is more pronounced in a short-term mating context, which would be consistent with the idea that red signals sexual availability. However, not only did the research not uncover an effect of mating context, all three experiments also failed to demonstrate any effect of red on attractiveness whatsoever. Continue reading “Wardrobe malfunction – three failed attempts to replicate the finding that red increases attractiveness” →

Sex, Thought December 5, 2016December 5, 2016

Experiencing passionate love linked with more belief in free will AND determinism

By Christian Jarrett

Psychologists have become very interested in the causes and consequences of our beliefs about free will. For instance, many consider that progress in neuroscience is likely to undermine our belief in free will (though this has been challenged). And in terms of consequences, less belief in free will has been shown to affect our own behaviour and judgments, for example increasing our tendency to cheat, and making us more lenient towards other people’s criminal culpability.

One unexplored issue is how experiencing deep, romantic love is likely to affect our belief in free will – or indeed vice versa. A new series of online studies in Consciousness and Cognition has made a start, looking at whether thinking about a more passionate versus less passionate relationship is linked with a greater or lesser belief in free will and, separately, stronger or lesser belief in determinism (the idea that the future is pre-determined and beyond our control). The answer, it turns out, is both. Thinking about a more intense passionate love affairs tends to go hand in hand with stronger beliefs in free will and stronger beliefs in determinism. Continue reading “Experiencing passionate love linked with more belief in free will AND determinism” →

Forensic, Gender, Misogyny, Sex October 10, 2016October 13, 2016

Training men to judge women’s sexual interest more accurately

Businessman Flirting Businesswoman — Researchers may have found a new way to combat sexual aggression

By Christian Jarrett

“You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.” Donald Trump, 2016 Republican Party nominee for US president, speaking in 2005 (full transcript).

The causes of sexual aggression are many, but anecdotal evidence (for example, as implied in the above quote), and research-based evidence, suggests that at least part of it has to do with when men overestimate women’s levels of sexual interest. A new study in the Psychology of Violence finds that men with a history of sexual aggression are especially likely to make this kind of misjudgment, in part because they focus on inappropriate cues, such as a woman’s attractiveness, rather than on her actual emotions. But promisingly, the research also suggests that it’s possible, through practice, to reduce this bias. This is an important finding considering previous research has shown that information-based educational programmes designed to reduce sexual aggression (through challenging rape myths, for example) are relatively ineffective. Continue reading “Training men to judge women’s sexual interest more accurately” →

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