What is the study of sexual attraction in humans called?
Androphilia and gynephilia
Following Hirschfeld, "androphilia" and "gynephilia" are sometimes used in taxonomies which specify sexual interests based on age ranges, which John Money called chronophilia. In such schemes, sexual attraction to adults is called teleiophilia or adultophilia. In this context, "androphilia" and "gynephilia" are gendered variants meaning "attraction to adult males" and "attraction to adult females," respectively. Psychologist Dennis Howitt writes:
Definition is primarily an issue of theory, not merely classification, since classification implies a theory, no matter how rudimentary. Freund "et al." (1984) used Latinesque words to classify sexual attraction along the dimensions of sex and age:
Gynephilia. Sexual interest in physically adult women
Androphilia. Sexual interest in physically adult males
Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women
The philosopher John Corvino wrote in "The Philosophy of Sex: Contemporary Readings" (1997) that "Homosexualities" is the study most commonly cited to prove that gay men are sexually promiscuous, but that it was not based on a broad sample and that Laumann's more extensive study produced different results. The psychologist Jim McKnight stated in "Straight Science? Homosexuality, Evolution and Adaptation" (1997) that while the idea that bisexuality is a form of sexual orientation intermediate between homosexuality and heterosexuality is implicit in the Kinsey scale, that view was brought into question by the publication of "Homosexualities" and is now "severely challenged". The philosopher Timothy F. Murphy described "Homosexualities" as an important study of homosexuality in "Gay Science" (1997), commenting that despite its limitations it is useful, provided that it, like other studies, is regarded as part of a scientific process of "measuring the adequacy of hypotheses and evidence" rather than as a "window opening on veridical truth". He added that Bell and Weinberg studied people who came of age before gay liberation, and that probably a much smaller proportion of gays would now be dissatisfied with their sexual orientation or interested in attempting to change it through therapy. The psychologists Stanton L. Jones and Mark A. Yarhouse observed in "Ex-gays? A Longitudinal Study of Religiously Mediated Change in Sexual Orientation" (2007) that "Homosexualities" is one of the most influential studies ever conducted on homosexuality, but that like several other influential studies, including those by Hooker, Kinsey, J. Michael Bailey, and Richard Pillard, its authors' conclusions were based on convenience samples, which have no known representativeness. They nevertheless consulted Bell and Weinberg's interview protocols when developing a questionnaire for their own study of ex-gays.
Sexual attraction
Though attempts have been made to devise objective criteria of sexual attractiveness and measure it as one of several bodily forms of capital asset ("see erotic capital"), a person's sexual attractiveness is to a large extent a subjective measure dependent on another person's interest, perception, and sexual orientation. For example, a gay or lesbian person would typically find a person of the same sex to be more attractive than one of the other sex. A bisexual person would find either sex to be attractive. Asexuality refers to those who do not experience sexual attraction for either sex, though they may have romantic attraction (homoromantic, biromantic or heteroromantic) or a non-directed libido. Interpersonal attraction includes factors such as physical or psychological similarity, familiarity or possessing a preponderance of common or familiar features, similarity, complementarity, reciprocal liking, and reinforcement.
Addiction
Reviews of both clinical research in humans and preclinical studies involving ΔFosB have identified compulsive sexual activity – specifically, any form of sexual intercourse – as an addiction (i.e., sexual addiction). Moreover, reward cross-sensitization between amphetamine and sexual activity, meaning that exposure to one increases the desire for both, has been shown to occur preclinically and clinically as a dopamine dysregulation syndrome; ΔFosB expression is required for this cross-sensitization effect, which intensifies with the level of ΔFosB expression.
Sexual orientation
Sexual orientation is an enduring pattern of romantic or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. These attractions are generally subsumed under heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality, while asexuality (the lack of sexual attraction to others) is sometimes identified as the fourth category.
Human sexual activity
Research has found that people also engage in sexual activity for reasons associated with self-determination theory. The self-determination theory can be applied to a sexual relationship when the participants have positive feelings associated with the relationship. These participants do not feel guilty or coerced into the partnership. Researchers have proposed the model of self-determined sexual motivation. The purpose of this model is to connect self-determination and sexual motivation. This model has helped to explain how people are sexually motivated when involved in self-determined dating relationships. This model also links the positive outcomes, (satisfying the need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness) gained from sexual motivations.
Genetic sexual attraction
The term was coined in the US in the late 1980s by Barbara Gonyo, the founder of "Truth Seekers In Adoption", a Chicago-based support group for adoptees and their new-found relatives. She developed sexual feelings for her son when she met him after he was adopted away, but he did not want to be part of any such contact.
Homosexualities: A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women
The sex researcher Alfred Kinsey had intended to publish a study of homosexuality to complement "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953), but died before being able to produce such a volume. Following Kinsey's death, the Institute for Sex Research became involved in other projects and did not focus its attention on homosexuality again until the late 1960s. Stanley Yolles of the National Institute of Mental Health established the National Institute of Mental Health Task Force on Homosexuality, which held its first meeting in 1967, and decided that further research into homosexuality was needed. The NIMH Task Force invited the Institute for Sex Research to submit a proposal for a comprehensive study of the development of homosexuality. The Institute's proposal, based upon many of the NIMH Task Force's recommendations, was modified after consultation with NIMH officials.
Fraternal birth order and male sexual orientation
Currin et al. (2015) carried out a study investigating the existence of the fraternal birth order effect in a variety of sexual orientation dimensions — namely, identity, attraction, fantasies, and behavior — whereas previous research studied only one such dimension (identity). Participants in the study were split into two groups: a "heterosexual group" and a "non-heterosexual" group. To determine what label participants used to identify their sexual orientation, participants were asked, "How would you classify your sexual orientation?" and selected from one of five options (heterosexual, mostly heterosexual, bisexual, mostly gay/lesbian, gay/lesbian). People who selected "heterosexual" were place in the heterosexual group, whereas people selecting "gay/lesbian" were placed in the non-heterosexual group. To assess sexual attraction, participants were asked, "How sexually attracted are you to men?" and selected from a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). Participants were also asked "How sexually attracted are you to women?" and were presented with the same Likert scale. People who selected 1 (not at all) when answering the same sex sexual attraction question were placed in the heterosexual group. People who selected 2 or greater were placed in the non-heterosexual group.
Clyde Hendrick
His main research interests include close relationships. During the past decade his primary focus has been around love and sex attitudes. In collaboration with doctoral students, Hendrick has studied various aspects related to love and sex attitudes. These two research areas are connected to close relations, such as relationship satisfaction, communication modalities, personality variables, conflict styles, and self-disclosure. He works very closely with Susan Hendrick on many of his research studies. As a second interest, Hendrick focuses on the writings of Charles S. Pierce. Together, they are known as "The Love Doctors".
Sexual desire
Theorists and researchers have usually employed two different frameworks in their understanding of human sexual desire. The first is a biological framework where sexual desire comes from an innate motivational force like “an instinct, drive, need, urge, wish, or want”. Also known as sex drive. Second, a socio-cultural theory where desire is conceptualized as one factor in a much larger context (i.e. relationships nested within societies, nested within cultures).
In the biological approach, sexual drive is likened to other biological drives such as hunger, where an individual will seek out food, or in the case of desire – pleasure, in order to reduce or avoid pain. Sex drive can be thought of as a biological need or craving that inspires individuals to seek out and become receptive to sexual experiences and sexual pleasure. However, members of all species (including humans) will not seek to engage in sexual activity with any conspecific, since attraction plays a large role in sexual desire. Incentive motivation theory exists under this framework. This theory states that the strength of motivation towards sexual activity depends on the strength of the stimuli (immediacy of stimuli), and if satiety is achieved, the strength of the stimuli/incentive will be increased in the future. Sex drive is strongly tied to biological factors such as “chromosomal and hormonal status, nutritional status, age, and general health”. Sexual desire is the first phase of the human sex response cycle. The traditional model for the human sexual response cycle can be represented as: Resolution. Sexual desire, though a part of the sexual response cycle, is believed to be distinct and separate from genital sexual arousal. It has also been argued that sexual desire is not a distinct phase in sexual response. Rather, it is something that persists through arousal and orgasm and can even persist after orgasm. Although orgasm might make it difficult for a man to maintain his erection or woman continue with vaginal lubrication, sexual desire can persist nevertheless.
Object sexuality
Object sexuality or objectophilia is a form of sexuality focused on particular inanimate objects. Individuals with this preference may have strong feelings of attraction, love, and commitment to certain items or structures of their fixation. For some, sexual or even close emotional relationships with humans are incomprehensible. Some object-sexual individuals also often believe in animism, and sense reciprocation based on the belief that objects have souls, intelligence, and feelings, and are able to communicate.
Body odour and sexual attraction
Odour is sensory stimulation of the olfactory membrane of the nose by a group of molecules. Certain body odours are connected to human sexual attraction. Humans can make use of body odour subconsciously to identify whether a potential mate will pass on favourable traits to their offspring. Body odour may provide significant cues about the genetic quality, health and reproductive success of a potential mate. Body odour affects sexual attraction in a number of ways including through human biology, the menstrual cycle and fluctuating asymmetry. It also affects the sexual attraction of insects and mammals.
Sexual arousal
Category-specificity refers to a person showing sexual arousal to the categories of people they prefer to have sex with. Sexual arousal studies involving category-specificity look at genital responses (physiological changes), as well as subjective responses (what people report their arousal levels to be). Category-specific sexual arousal is more commonly found amongst men than women. Heterosexual men experience much higher genital and subjective arousal to women than to men. This pattern is reversed for homosexual men.
Sexual selection in humans
Charles Darwin described sexual selection as depending on "the advantage which certain individuals have over others of the same sex and species, solely in respect of reproduction". Darwin noted that sexual selection is of two kinds and concluded that both kinds had operated on humans: "The sexual struggle is of two kinds; in the one it is between the individuals of the same sex, generally the male sex, in order to drive away or kill their rivals, the females remaining passive; whilst in the other, the struggle is likewise between the individuals of the same sex, in order to excite or charm those of the opposite sex, generally the females, which no longer remain passive, but select the more agreeable partners."
Sexual arousal
One way to study sexual arousal in women and men is to conduct sexual psychophysiological research in a laboratory setting. This field of research looks at physical sexual responses in addition to mental and emotional experiences of sexual arousal.
Sexual ethics
Sexual ethics or sex ethics (also called sexual morality) is the study of ethics in relation to human sexuality and sexual behavior. Sexual ethics seeks to understand and evaluate the moral conduct of interpersonal relationships and sexual activities from social, cultural, and philosophical perspectives. Sexual ethics involve issues such as gender identification, sexual orientation, consent, sexual relations, and procreation.
Sexual Preference (book)
The psychologists Stanton L. Jones and Mark Yarhouse described "Sexual Preference" as a famous study in "Homosexuality: The Use of Scientific Research in the Church's Moral Debate" (2000). They maintained that because Bell "et al."′s data suggest that mothers have only a weak influence on the development of homosexuality their work is "sometimes thought of as the study that discredited the psychoanalytic theory." However, they observed that in Bell "et al."′s sample "considerably more homosexual males reported fathers who were detached or not affectionate than did heterosexual men", and concluded that, "While clearly not providing definitive support for the psychoanalytic hypothesis, this study is surely not the refutation of that hypothesis that it is sometimes supposed to be." The historian Laurie Guy observed in "Worlds in Collision: The Gay Debate in New Zealand, 1960–1986" (2002) that the type of evidence on which "Sexual Preference" relied, adult recollection of childhood, had been criticized by Gagnon and Simon as long ago as 1973. He argued that gay rights organizations in New Zealand over-relied upon the work in the debate that preceded the passage of the Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986, writing that while important, it was only one study, and as such did not support gay rights activist claims that "all evidence" shows that sexual orientation is fixed early in life. The neuroscientist Simon LeVay wrote in "Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why" (2010) that statistical studies support Freud′s view that on average gay men are more likely than straight men to describe their relationships with their mothers as close and their relationships with their fathers as distant or hostile; he cited Bell "et al." in support of this claim.
Sexual attraction
The ability of a person's physical and other qualities to create a sexual interest in others is the basis of their use in advertising, film, and other visual media, as well as in modeling and other occupations.
Psychological adaptation
This difference in theory can be seen in research on modern human sexual preferences, with behaviourists arguing that attraction has conditioning influences, such as from the media or cultural norms, while others arguing it is based on psychological adaptations. However, sexual preferences are a difficult subject to test due to the amount of variance and flexibility exhibited in human mate choice. A hybrid resolution to psychological adaptations and learned behaviours refers to an adaptation as the species’ capacity for a certain behavior, while each individual organism still needs to be conditioned to exhibit that behaviour. This approach can explain language acquisition in relation to linguist and cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky's model of human language. His model supports that the capacity for language is a psychological adaptation (involving both the language necessary brain structures and disposition for language acquisition), however, children lack any particular instantiation of language at birth, and must instead learn one in the their environment.
Motivation
Additionally, under the umbrella of evolution, is Darwin's term sexual selection. This refers to how the female selects the male for reproduction. The male is motivated to attain sex because of all the aforementioned reasons, but how he attains it can vary based on his qualities. For some females, they are motivated by the will to survive mostly, and will prefer a mate that can physically defend her, or financially provide for her (among humans). Some females are more attracted to charm, as it is an indicator of being a good loyal lover that will in turn make for a dependable child rearing partner. Altogether, sex is a hedonistic pleasure seeking behavior that satiates physical and psychological needs and is instinctively guided by principles of evolution.
Sexual Desire (book)
According to Scruton, sexual desire does not originate in sexual arousal or have sexual arousal as its aim. He believes that while sexual arousal may seem to support the idea that desire is "a 'biological' fact, rooted in the life which we share with animals", it does not do so, because it is an interpersonal response founded in an epistemic intentionality and can be experienced only by people. He argues that though non-human animals experience sexual urges, they do not experience sexual desire. He attempts to defend this conclusion against potential criticism by clarifying the ideas of the animal and the person. In his view, the concept of the person is not a qualification of the concept of the animal, but a distinct concept with a differing purpose. Scruton outlines the history of the term "person", noting that in the theatre a "persona", originally a mask, came to stand for a theatrical character. "Persona" was then used in a more general sense, to refer to any representation of a human being, and in Roman law came to denote the "collection of rights and liabilities which the law courts could adjudicate, on behalf of the subject who appeared before them." Though he rejects the idea that the concept of legal personality can be used to distinguish what separates humans from non-human animals, he considers it relevant to understanding the concept of the person.
Scruton believes that desire is characterised by intentionality. He argues that "desire expresses itself through patterns of deliberate activity" but can nevertheless be understood as an expression of human mental states only if "we recognise the central importance of the involuntary aspect of human behaviour", giving blushing, laughter, and the erection of the penis as examples. He sees the focus of desire as embodiment, which entails finding a unity between the body and the personal identity of the desired person. He criticises what he considers a common picture of the aim of sexual desire, according to which it begins in sexual arousal and has as its objective "pleasurable stimulus" and orgasm. He considers Kinsey and his co-authors the "most-simple minded" proponents of this view, writing that they unacceptably see orgasm as the aim of desire and "the presence of the other person as its occasion." He follows Sartre and Thomas Nagel in holding that the "attempt to assimilate sexual desire to appetite misses the interpersonal component of human sexual responses." He argues that ordinary language shows that the object of sexual desire is the "person himself", and that despite the possibility of mistakes of identity, it is part of the directed character of desire that its object is a particular person.
Zoophilia
The term "zoophilia" was introduced into the field of research on sexuality in "Psychopathia Sexualis" (1886) by Krafft-Ebing, who described a number of cases of "violation of animals (bestiality)", as well as "zoophilia erotica", which he defined as a sexual attraction to animal skin or fur. The term "zoophilia" derives from the combination of two nouns in Greek: ζῷον ("zṓion", meaning "animal") and φιλία ("philia", meaning "(fraternal) love"). In general contemporary usage, the term "zoophilia" may refer to sexual activity between human and non-human animals, the desire to engage in such, or to the specific paraphilia ("i.e.," the atypical arousal) which indicates a definite preference for non-human animals over humans as sexual partners. Although Krafft-Ebing also coined the term "zooerasty" for the paraphilia of exclusive sexual attraction to animals, that term has fallen out of general use.
Abel Assessment
The Abel Assessment for Sexual Interest (also Abel Assessment for Interest in Paraphilias) is an assessment test that purports to measure sexual interest in various subjects – and especially to measure a tendency toward pedophilia. The test was created by Dr. Gene G. Abel in 1995, and has been subsequently revised several times. It has been used as evidence in Northern America when prosecuting sex offenders, although its reliability has since been disputed and it has been declared inadmissible in court in various jurisdictions.
Ellen S. Berscheid
Berscheid accepted a job teaching research methods in the business department at the University of Minnesota. Through the business department, Berscheid met Elaine (Walster) Hatfield. Hatfield convinced Berscheid to join her in researching equity and attraction. At the time, women conducting research was rare and may have been stopped if too many people had taken notice, therefore Hatfield and Berscheid conducted their research quietly through a federal grant. Berscheid's main research interest was interpersonal relationships. Ellen Berscheid looked at why people fall in love, the meaning of love, and attraction in close relationships.
Matching hypothesis
The matching hypothesis (also known as the matching phenomenon) is derived from the discipline of social psychology and was first proposed by Elaine Hatfield and her colleagues in 1966, which suggests why people become attracted to their partner. It claims that people are more likely to form and succeed in a committed relationship with someone who is equally socially desirable. This is often researched in the form of physical attraction.
Interpersonal attraction
The evolutionary theory of human interpersonal attraction states that opposite-sex attraction most often occurs when someone has physical features indicating that he or she is very fertile. Considering that one primary purpose of conjugal/romantic relationships is reproduction, it would follow that people invest in partners who appear very fertile, increasing the chance of their genes being passed down to the next generation. This theory has been criticized because it does not explain relationships between same-sex couples or couples who do not want children, although this may have something to do with the fact that whether one wants children or not one is still subject to the evolutionary forces which produce them.
Seduction
Seduction, seen negatively, involves temptation and enticement, often sexual in nature, to lead someone astray into a behavioural choice they would not have made if they were not in a state of sexual arousal. Seen positively, seduction is a synonym for the act of charming someone—male or female—by an appeal to the senses, often with the goal of reducing unfounded fears and leading to their "sexual emancipation." Some sides in contemporary academic debate state that the morality of seduction depends on the long-term impacts on the individuals concerned, rather than the act itself, and may not necessarily carry the negative connotations expressed in dictionary definitions.
Sexual arousal
The effect of sexual response is thought to be a plastic positive reinforcement behavior modifier associated with the Baldwin effect. The display of secondary sex characteristics in humans such as a penis-like enlarged clitoris in females during arousal and gynecomastia in males are thought to have once been objects of mate selection in human evolution because of the persistence of the phenomenon of these features invoking sexual arousal for potential mates in cross-cultural studies. A dramatic example of this is the high rates of secondary sex characteristic dimorphism in some Southeast Asia human populations. Similar evolutionary stimuli may also have resulted in novel structures such as the pseudo-penis of the female spotted hyena.
Love addiction
Love addiction is a proposed model of pathological passion-related behavior involving the feeling of being in love. A medical review of related behaviors in animals and humans concluded that current medical evidence does not support an addiction model for maladaptive passion-related behaviors. There has never been a reference to love addiction in the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM), a compendium of mental disorders and diagnostic criteria published by the American Psychiatric Association.
Anthrozoology
Anthrozoology (also known as human–non-human-animal studies, or HAS) is the subset of ethnobiology that deals with interactions between humans and other animals. It is an interdisciplinary field that overlaps with other disciplines including anthropology, ethnology, medicine, psychology, veterinary medicine and zoology. A major focus of anthrozoologic research is the quantifying of the positive effects of human-animal relationships on either party and the study of their interactions. It includes scholars from fields such as anthropology, sociology, biology, history and philosophy.
Zoophilia
Zoophilia has been partly discussed by several sciences: Psychology (the study of the human mind), sexology (a relatively new discipline primarily studying human sexuality), ethology (the study of animal behavior), and anthrozoology (the study of human-animal interactions and bonds).
Michael Cunningham (psychologist)
Michael Robert Cunningham is an American social psychologist and professor in the Department of Communications at the University of Louisville. He is known for his research on perceived physical attractiveness of both men and women by members of the opposite sex. He has also researched the effects of emotions like trust and guilt on financial decision-making. He is also known for his pioneering work on hand transplantation.
Human ethology
Human ethology is the study of human behavior.
Ethology as a discipline is generally thought of as a sub-category of biology, though psychological theories have been developed based on ethological ideas (e.g. sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, attachment theory, and theories about human universals such as gender differences, incest avoidance, mourning, hierarchy and pursuit of possession). The bridging between biological sciences and social sciences creates an understanding of human ethology.
Distraction
Distraction is often used as a coping mechanism for short-term emotion regulation. When presented with an unpleasant reality, humans often choose to occupy their attention with some other reality in order to remain in a positive mental state. This is referred to as ‘procrastination’ when the unpleasant reality is in the form of work. The natural human inclination to distract oneself was put to the test when the Department of Psychology at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (Humboldt University of Berlin) held an experiment to study distraction. The goal of the experiment was to examine whether the effects of distraction on where subjects held their attention during repeated picture processing is changed by regular emotional functions. Furthermore, they hypothesized that while distraction assists in short-term emotional regulation, it is actually harmful in the long term. In order to do so, the experimenters had subjects view 15 unpleasant pictures (Set A) and “attend” to them (meaning the subjects were asked to pay full attention to the pictures). Next, the subjects were shown 15 unpleasant pictures (Set B) and were asked to distract themselves from the pictures (meaning they were to think about anything other than the picture on the screen; their example was to think about “the way to the supermarket”). Finally, the subjects were shown 15 neutral pictures (Set C) and were asked to attend to them. After 10 minutes of rest, the subjects entered the “re-exposure phase”, which repeated the experiment- this time requiring the subjects to pay attention to all of the sets, including Set B. This experiment was performed on 3 separate blocks of participants. To examine the state of the subjects’ brain, the subject was to wear “Ag/AgCl-electrodes from 61 head sites using an EasyCap electrode system with an equidistant electrode montage. Additional external electrodes were placed below the left (IO1) and right eye (IO2), below T1 (ground), on the nasion, and on the neck.” The subjects were also asked to rate the unpleasantness of the picture on the screen on a scale of 1-9. To test whether distraction in the first phase resulted in increased responsiveness during the re-exposure phase, experimenters “compared mean unpleasantness ratings between unpleasant pictures that were previously presented in the attend (previous attention) versus distract (previous distraction) condition using a paired t-test”. The end results of the experiment were as such:
Essentially, when exposed to an unpleasant image, the subject feels initial discomfort. However, after being exposed to it once with their full attention, the subject feels much less discomfort the second time they are exposed. When the subject distracts themselves from the initial unpleasant image, the subject feels more discomfort the second time when they are required to attend to the image. The experimenters’ conclusion is thus: “the obtained results suggest that distraction inhibits elaborate processing of the stimulus' meaning and adapting to it.”
Human sexuality
People both consciously and subconsciously seek to attract others with whom they can form deep relationships. This may be for companionship, procreation, or an intimate relationship. This involves interactive processes whereby people find and attract potential partners and maintain a relationship. These processes, which involve attracting one or more partners and maintaining sexual interest, can include:
Reward theory of attraction
The fact that people are attracted to those who make them feel good can also explain why people are attracted to those they cannot have. Forbidden love is the most intense. Again, dopamine plays a major role. Beyond pleasure, dopamine is also associated with focus, motivation, and goal-oriented behavior. When a person cannot get somebody, the dopamine system keeps on spitting out hormones, providing the adrenaline, focus and motivation necessary to keep trying.
Bisexuality
Male bisexuality is particularly presumed to be non-existent, with sexual fluidity studies adding to the debate. In 2005, researchers Gerulf Rieger, Meredith L. Chivers, and J. Michael Bailey used penile plethysmography to measure the arousal of self-identified bisexual men to pornography involving only men and pornography involving only women. Participants were recruited via advertisements in gay-oriented magazines and an alternative paper. They found that the self-identified bisexual men in their sample had genital arousal patterns similar to either homosexual or heterosexual men. The authors concluded that "in terms of behavior and identity, bisexual men clearly exist", but that male bisexuality had not been shown to exist with respect to arousal or attraction. The assertion of Bailey that "for men arousal is orientation" was criticized by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) as a simplification which neglects to account for behavior and self-identification. Further, some researchers hold that the technique used in the study to measure genital arousal is too crude to capture the richness (erotic sensations, affection, admiration) that constitutes sexual attraction. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force called the study and "The New York Times" coverage of it flawed and biphobic.
Evergreen International
The National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), also known as the NARTH Institute, is an organization that (since 2014) functions under the Alliance for Therapeutic Choice and Scientific Integrity (ATCSI). It offers conversion therapy and other regimens that purport to change the sexual orientation of people with same-sex attraction. NARTH was founded in 1992 and has been described as "a multi-disciplinary professional and scientific organization dedicated to the service of persons who experience unwanted homosexual (same-sex) attractions (SSA)".
Interpersonal attraction
In a 1988 study, Lydon, Jamieson & Zanna suggest that interpersonal similarity and attraction are multidimensional constructs in which people are attracted to people similar to themselves in demographics, physical appearance, attitudes, interpersonal style, social and cultural background, personality, preferred interests and activities, and communication and social skills. Newcomb's earlier 1961 study on college-dorm roommates also suggested that individuals with shared backgrounds, academic achievements, attitudes, values, and political views typically became friends.
Sexual revolution
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Alfred C. Kinsey published two surveys of modern sexual behaviour. In 1948 Alfred C. Kinsey and his co-workers, responding to a request by female students at Indiana University for more information on human sexual behavior, published the book "Sexual behaviour in the Human Male". They followed this five years later with "Sexual behaviour in the Human Female". These books began a revolution in social awareness of, and public attention given to, human sexuality.
Human sexual response cycle
The human sexual response cycle is a four-stage model of physiological responses to sexual stimulation, which, in order of their occurrence, are the excitement phase, plateau phase, orgasmic phase and resolution phase. This physiological response model was first formulated by William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, in their 1966 book "Human Sexual Response". Since then, other human sexual response models have been formulated.
Sex and Reason
Posner discusses human sexuality from a multidisciplinary perspective, aiming to summarize the principal findings of scientific literature on the subject and explain their relevance to law. He considers controversial topics such as the AIDS epidemic, abortion, the gay rights movement, the sexual revolution, surrogate motherhood, marital rape, date rape, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, and pornography. According to Posner, he decided to write about sex because of his "belated discovery that judges know next to nothing about the subject beyond their own personal experience", despite being responsible for the interpretation and application of laws regulating sex. He describes his reading of the philosopher Plato's 4th century BC dialogue the "Symposium", which he describes as a "highly interesting and articulate" defense of homosexual love, as one of the events that inspired him to begin the research for his book. Posner writes that his "larger ambition is to present a theory of sexuality that both explains the principal regularities in the practice of sex and in its social, including legal, regulation and points the way toward reforms in that regulation—thus a theory at once positive (descriptive) and normative (ethical)." He refers to this approach to the study of sexual behavior and its social regulation as "the economic theory of sexuality", describing it as, "Functional, secular, instrumental" and "utilitarian".
Authors whose work on sex Posner discusses include Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, the biologist Alfred Kinsey, and the philosopher Michel Foucault. He writes that Kinsey was "picked by the university authorities to head up the newly created Institute for Sex Research" and that "when their limitations are understood and respected" the Kinsey Reports "are a vast mine of useful information, have been repeatedly corroborated by other studies, and appear to be generally accurate, at least for the sample interviewed, because of the extraordinary lengths to which the interviewers went to elicit truthful answers." According to Posner, sociobiology has "advanced striking hypotheses concerning aspects of human sexuality such as courting, the double standard, polygamy, and homosexual preference." He refers to the anthropologist Donald Symons's "The Evolution of Human Sexuality" (1979) as the "best single book on the sociobiology of sex".
Fatal attraction
Fatal attraction research explains phenomena in interpersonal relationships as well it adds value to a larger body of research on interpersonal relationships. The concepts covered in fatal attraction are very similar to the concepts covered in relational dialectics. Where one approach leaves off, another adds new layers of insight and understanding.
Human sexuality
Interest in sexual activity typically increases when an individual reaches puberty. Opinions differ on the origins of an individual's sexual orientation and sexual behavior. Some argue that sexuality is determined by genetics, while others believe it is molded by the environment, or that both of these factors interact to form the individual's sexual orientation. This pertains to the nature versus nurture debate. In the former, one assumes that the features of a person innately correspond to their natural inheritance, exemplified by drives and instincts; the latter refers to the assumption that the features of a person continue to change throughout their development and nurturing, exemplified by ego ideals and formative identifications.
Enzo Emanuele
Enzo Emanuele (born June 10, 1977) is an Italian clinical pathologist renowned for his interdisciplinary research in the field of biological psychology. He has studied the biochemical basis of romantic interpersonal attraction and identified the neurotrophin nerve growth factor (NGF) as a key biochemical mediator of falling in love. The implications of this research have been criticized in the popular press. In 2008, his genetic research, which showed an association between serotonin and dopamine receptor gene polymorphisms and certain love traits, was awarded with the International Zdenek Klein Award for Human Ethology from the Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.
Sexual arousal
During the late 1950s and early 1960s, William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson conducted many important studies into human sexuality. In 1966, they published "Human Sexual Response", detailing four stages of physiological changes in humans during sexual stimulation: excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution.
Attractiveness
Physical attractiveness can also include the attraction of smell. Pheromones secreted by animals and humans alike can attract others, and this is viewed as being attracted to smell. Human sex pheromones may play a role in human attraction, although it is unclear how well humans can actually pick up on the pheromones of another.
Heterosexuality
In a 2004 study, the female subjects (both gay and straight women) became strongly sexually aroused when they viewed heterosexual as well as lesbian erotic films. Among the male subjects, however, the straight men were more turned on by erotic films with women, the gay ones more by those with men. The study's senior researcher said that women's sexual desire is less rigidly directed toward a particular sex, as compared with men's, and it is more changeable over time. However, the study did note that on average all men, regardless of sexual orientation, showed significantly more genital arousal to their non-preferred sex compared to neutral stimuli. Gay men showed some level of genital arousal to female stimuli and straight men showed some level of genital arousal to male stimuli.
Human sexuality
Freud believed sexual drives are instinctive. He was a firm supporter of the nature argument; he said there are a large number of instincts but they are reduced into two broad groups: Eros (the life instinct), which comprises the self-preserving and erotic instincts, and Thanatos (the death instinct), which comprises instincts invoking aggression, self-destruction, and cruelty. He gave sexual drives a centrality in human life, actions, and behaviors that had not been accepted before his proposal. His instinct theory said humans are driven from birth by the desire to acquire and enhance bodily pleasures, thus supporting the nature debate. Freud redefined the term "sexuality" to make it cover any form of pleasure that can be derived from the human body. He also said pleasure lowers tension while displeasure raises it, influencing the sexual drive in humans. His developmentalist perspective was governed by inner forces, especially biological drives and maturation, and his view that humans are biologically inclined to seek sexual gratification demonstrates the nature side of the debate.
The nurture debate traces back to John Locke and his theory of the mind as a "tabula rasa" or blank slate. Later, behaviorists would apply this notion in support of the idea that the environment is where one develops one's sexual drives.
Men's studies
Men's studies, often called men and masculinities in academic settings, is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning men, masculinity, feminism, gender, and politics. It draws upon feminist theory in order to analyze different ideologies having to do with masculinity, and through such analysis to examine the multiple "masculinities" contained in the idea of masculinity itself. Men's studies also academically examine what it means to be a man in contemporary society.
Physical attractiveness
Most studies of the brain activations associated with the perception of attractiveness show photographs of faces to their participants and let them or a comparable group of people rate the attractiveness of these faces. Such studies consistently find that activity in certain parts of the orbitofrontal cortex increases with increasing attractiveness of faces. This neural response has been interpreted as a reaction on the rewarding nature of attractiveness, as similar increases in activation in the medial orbitofrontal cortex can be seen in response to smiling faces and to statements of morally good actions. While most of these studies have not assessed participants of both genders or homosexual individuals, evidence from one study including male and female hetero- and homosexual individuals indicate that some of the aforementioned increases in brain activity are restricted to images of faces of the gender participants feel sexually attracted to.
Sexual Preference (book)
Robinson suggested that Bell "et al." might have misidentified gender nonconformity as a cause of homosexuality, rather than as one of its expressions, but nevertheless found "Sexual Preference" to be a "superb" book that answered the question of how people become heterosexual or homosexual better than any previous study, disqualified most previous answers, and was comparable to Alfred Kinsey's best work. He maintained that their study's empirical foundation and path analysis gave Bell "et al."′s findings "unprecedented trustworthiness". Robinson credited Bell "et al." with documenting the "intellectual poverty" of psychoanalytic hypotheses about homosexuality. He lamented that unlike "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953), which gained popular attention, "Sexual Preference" "seems destined for academic oblivion." Halgin wrote that the book would be considered a landmark publication in sexology, and was more scientifically rigorous than most research in the field, but that it was also likely to create controversy.
Sexual orientation change efforts
There are no studies of adequate scientific rigor to conclude whether or not recent SOCE do or do not work to change a person’s sexual orientation. Scientifically rigorous older work in this area (e.g., Birk, Huddleston, Miller, & Cohler, 1971; James, 1978; McConaghy, 1969, 1976; McConaghy, Proctor, & Barr, 1972; Tanner, 1974, 1975) found that sexual orientation (i.e., erotic attractions and sexual arousal oriented to one sex or the other, or both) was unlikely to change due to efforts designed for this purpose. Some individuals appeared to learn how to ignore or limit their attractions. However, this was much less likely to be true for people whose sexual attractions were initially limited to people of the same sex.
Human sexuality
Certain characteristics may be innate in humans; these characteristics may be modified by the physical and social environment in which people interact. Human sexuality is driven by genetics and mental activity. The sexual drive affects the development of personal identity and social activities. An individual's normative, social, cultural, educational, and environmental characteristics moderate the sexual drive. Two well-known schools in psychology took opposing positions in the nature-versus-nurture debate: the Psychoanalytic school led by Sigmund Freud and the Behaviorist school which traces its origins to John Locke.
Introspection illusion
Research by Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel (described as "one of the leading lights in the realm of relationship psychology") at Northwestern University also undermined the idea that subjects have direct introspective awareness of what attracts them to other people. These researchers examined male and female subjects' reports of what they found attractive. Men typically reported that physical attractiveness was crucial while women identified earning potential as most important. These subjective reports did not predict their actual choices in a speed dating context, or their dating behaviour in a one-month follow-up.
The Aetiology of Hysteria
The Aetiology of Hysteria () is a paper by Sigmund Freud about the sexual abuse of children below the age of puberty and its possible causation of mental illness in adults. Presented in April 1896, it is where Freud first outlined his seduction theory.
Human sexuality
Sexuality in humans generates profound emotional and psychological responses. Some theorists identify sexuality as the central source of human personality. Psychological studies of sexuality focus on psychological influences that affect sexual behavior and experiences. Early psychological analyses were carried out by Sigmund Freud, who believed in a psychoanalytic approach. He also proposed the concepts of psychosexual development and the Oedipus complex, among other theories.
Sexual stimulation
Perhaps the most researched non-tactile form of sexual stimulation is visual sexual stimulation. An apparent example is the act of voyeurism – a practice where an individual covertly watches another undress or engage in sexual behaviour. Although seen socio-historically as an unacceptable form of 'sexual deviation', it highlights the human tendency to find sexual stimulation through purely visual routes. The multibillion-dollar industry that is pornography is another example. A common presumption in society and the media is that men respond more strongly to visual sexual stimuli than do women. This is perhaps best exemplified by the Kinsey hypothesis that men are more prone to sexual arousal from visual stimulation than women and, arguably, can be seen depicted through the "male glaze" that dominates the pornography industry. Nonetheless, both sexes can be sexually aroused through visual stimulation. In one study, visual stimulation was tested by means of an erotic video. Although significantly higher in the male group, sexual arousal was the main emotional reaction reported by both sexes. Their physiological responses to the video also showed characteristics of sexual arousal, such as increased urinary excretions of adrenaline. A subsequent study investigating male arousal showed that men were able to achieve rigid erections through visual stimulation of an erotic film alone.
Love
Biological models of sex tend to view love as a mammalian drive, much like hunger or thirst. Helen Fisher, an anthropologist and human behavior researcher, divides the experience of love into three partly overlapping stages: lust, attraction, and attachment. Lust is the feeling of sexual desire; romantic attraction determines what partners mates find attractive and pursue, conserving time and energy by choosing; and attachment involves sharing a home, parental duties, mutual defense, and in humans involves feelings of safety and security. Three distinct neural circuitries, including neurotransmitters, and three behavioral patterns, are associated with these three romantic styles.
Hebephilia
Multiple research studies have investigated the sexual attraction patterns of hebephilic and pedophilic men. The sexual attraction to children appears to fall along a continuum instead of being dichotomous. The attractions of hebephiles and pedophiles are less focused on the child's sex than are the attractions of "teleiophiles" (people who sexually prefer adults)—i.e., much larger proportions of hebephiles and pedophiles than teleiophiles report being attracted to both males and females.
Men's studies
As a relatively new field of study, men's studies was formed largely in response to, and as a critique of, an emerging men's rights movement, and as such, has been taught in academic settings only since the 1970s. In many universities, men's studies is a correlation to women's studies or part of a larger gender studies program, and as such its faculty tends to be sympathetic to, or engaged in, advocacy of feminist politics. Men's studies works with feminist studies to question the relationship that men have with patriarchal power throughout different temporal and historical times. The concept of plural "masculinities" was proposed by R.W. Connell in her influential book "Masculinities" (1995); thus the academic field is today often known as "men and masculinities".
In contrast to the discipline of masculine psychology, men's studies programs and courses often include contemporary discussions of men's rights, feminist theory, queer theory, matriarchy, patriarchy, and more generally, what proponents describe as the social, historical, and cultural constructions of men. They often discuss the issues surrounding male privilege, seen as evolving into more subtle forms rather than disappearing in the modern era.
Ophidiophilia
Ophidiophilia is defined as the attraction to snakes; it is the opposite of ophidiophobia (the fear of snakes). Ophidiophilia is a subcategory of zoophilia, the sexual attraction to animals in general. People with ophidiophilia are known as ophidiophiles. Ophidiophilia doesn't always appear as sexual attraction, some ophidiophiles are attracted to snakes on a platonic (non-sexual) level.
Human ethology
Many developmental psychologists were eager to incorporate ethological principles into their theories as a way of explaining observable phenomenon in babies that could not necessarily be explained by learning or other concepts. John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth used ethology prominently to explain aspects of infant-caretaker‍‍ attachment theory‍‍ (Ainsworth & Bowlby, 1991). Some important attachment concepts related to evolution:In later years, ethology played a large role in sociobiological theory and ultimately, in evolutionary psychology, which is a relatively new field of study. Evolutionary psychology combines ethology, primatology, anthropology, and other fields to study modern human behavior in relation to adaptive ancestral human behaviors.
Applied to human behavior, in the majority of cases, topical behavior results from motivational states and the intensity of a specific external stimulus. Organisms with a high inner motivational state for such a stimulus is called appetitive behavior. Other important concepts of zooethology, e.g., territoriality, hierarchy, sensitive periods in ontogenesis, etc., are also useful when discussing human behavior. Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt's book "Human Ethology" is most important for how these concepts are applied to human behavior.
Human sexuality
Human sexuality is the way people experience and express themselves sexually. This involves biological, erotic, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual feelings and behaviors. Because it is a broad term, which has varied over time, it lacks a precise definition. The biological and physical aspects of sexuality largely concern the human reproductive functions, including the human sexual response cycle. Someone's sexual orientation can influence that person's sexual interest and attraction for another person. Physical and emotional aspects of sexuality include bonds between individuals that are expressed through profound feelings or physical manifestations of love, trust, and care. Social aspects deal with the effects of human society on one's sexuality, while spirituality concerns an individual's spiritual connection with others. Sexuality also affects and is affected by cultural, political, legal, philosophical, moral, ethical, and religious aspects of life.
Heterosexuality
According to "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" by Alfred Kinsey and several other modern studies, the majority of humans have had both heterosexual and homosexual experiences or sensations and are bisexual. Kinsey himself, along with current sex therapists, focused on the historicity and fluidity of sexual orientation. Kinsey's studies consistently found sexual orientation to be something that evolves in many directions over a person's lifetime; rarely, but not necessarily, including forming attractions to a new sex. Rarely do individuals radically reorient their sexualities rapidly—and still less do they do so volitionally—but often sexualities expand, shift, and absorb new elements over decades. For example, socially normative "age-appropriate" sexuality requires a shifting object of attraction (especially in the passage through adolescence). Contemporary queer theory, incorporating many ideas from social constructionism, tends to look at sexuality as something that has meaning only within a given historical framework. Sexuality, then, is seen as a participation in a larger social discourse and, though in some sense fluid, not as something strictly determinable by the individual.
Physical attractiveness
Biological anthropologist Helen E. Fisher of the Center for Human Evolution Studies in the Department of Anthropology of Rutgers University said that, "perhaps, the fleshy, rounded buttocks... attracted males during rear-entry intercourse." In a recent study, using 3D models and eye-tracking technology Fisher's claim was tested and was shown that the slight thrusting out of a woman's back influence how attractive others perceive her to be and captures the gaze of both men and women. Bobbi S. Low et al. of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan, said the female "buttocks evolved in the context of females competing for the attention and parental commitment of powerful resource-controlling males" as an "honest display of fat reserves" that could not be confused with another type of tissue, although T. M. Caro, professor in the Center for Population Biology and the Department of Wildlife, Fish, and Conservation Biology, at University of California, Davis, rejected that as being a necessary conclusion, stating that female fatty deposits on the hips improve "individual fitness of the female", regardless of sexual selection.
Social psychology
A major area in the study of people's relations to each other is interpersonal attraction. This refers to all forces that lead people to like each other, establish relationships, and (in some cases) fall in love. Several general principles of attraction have been discovered by social psychologists, but many still continue to experiment and do research to find out more. One of the most important factors in interpersonal attraction is how similar two particular people are. The more similar two people are in general attitudes, backgrounds, environments, worldviews, and other traits, the more probable an attraction is possible.
Human sexual activity
Homosexuality is the romantic or sexual attraction to the same sex. People with a homosexual orientation can express their sexuality in a variety of ways, and may or may not express it in their behaviors. Research indicates that many gay men and lesbians want, and succeed in having, committed and durable relationships. For example, survey data indicate that between 40% and 60% of gay men and between 45% and 80% of lesbians are currently involved in a romantic relationship.
Devendra Singh
Devendra Singh (January 12, 1938 – May 18, 2010) was a professor of Psychology at the University of Texas, known largely for his research regarding the evolutionary significance of human attraction.
Sexual addiction
The controversy surrounding sexual addiction is centered around its identification, through a diagnostic model, in a clinical setting. As noted in current medical literature reviews, compulsive sexual behavior has been observed in humans;drug-induced compulsive sexual behavior has also been noted clinically in some individuals taking dopaminergic drugs. Moreover, some research suggests compulsive engagement in sexual behavior despite negative consequences in animal models.Since current diagnostic models use drug-related concepts as diagnostic criteria for addictions, these are ill-suited for modelling compulsive behaviors in a clinical setting. Consequently, diagnostic classification systems, such as the DSM, do not include sexual addiction as a diagnosis because there is currently "insufficient peer-reviewed evidence to establish the diagnostic criteria and course descriptions needed to identify these behaviors as mental disorders". A 2014 systematic review on sexual addiction indicated that the "lack of empirical evidence on sexual addiction is the result of the disease's complete absence from versions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders."
There have been debates regarding the definition and existence of sexual addictions for decades, as the issue was covered in a 1994 journal article. The [[Mayo Clinic]] considers sexual addiction a form of [[obsessive compulsive disorder]] and refer to it as "sexual compulsivity" (note that by definition, an addiction is a compulsion toward rewarding stimuli). A paper dating back to 1988 and a journal comment letter published in 2006 asserted that sex addiction is itself a myth, a by-product of cultural and other influences. The 1988 paper argued that the condition is instead a way of projecting [[social stigma]] onto patients.
Outline of human sexuality
Human sexuality is the capacity to have erotic experiences and responses. Human sexuality can also refer to the way one person is sexually attracted to another person of the opposite sex (heterosexuality), the same sex (homosexuality), or having both tendencies (bisexuality). The lack of sexual attraction is referred to as asexuality. Human sexuality impacts cultural, political, legal and philosophical aspects of life, as well as being widely connected to issues of morality, ethics, theology, spirituality, or religion. It is not, however, directly tied to gender.
Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why
LeVay discusses scientific research on sexual orientation conducted since his 1991 study of the hypothalamus. He writes that the research supports the conclusion that sexual orientation is a product of the interactions between sex hormones and the developing brain, which predispose people's minds toward masculinity or femininity. LeVay argues that sexual orientation should be understand as an aspect of gender, seen from a biological perspective. He defines "sexual orientation" as "the trait that predisposes us to experience sexual attraction to people of the same sex as ourselves ("homosexual", "gay", or "lesbian"), to persons of the other sex ("heterosexual" or "straight"), or to both sexes ("bisexual"). He criticizes the work of Alfred Kinsey, writing that while Kinsey took sexual behavior into account in judging a person's sexual orientation, that approach suffers from the problem that "sexual behavior is influenced by many factors that have nothing to do with one's basic sexual feelings and that are changeable over time." LeVay argues that in general only people's sexual feelings should be taken into account in assessing their sexual orientation.
Criticizing conversion therapy, LeVay writes that the majority view among mental health professionals is that it is unlikely to be effective and has the potential to cause harm. However, LeVay notes that a study by the psychiatrist Robert Spitzer identified two hundred people who claimed that it helped them to make a significant shift from homosexuality to heterosexuality. LeVay interprets Spitzer's study as showing that, "at least a few highly motivated gay people can be helped to engage in and derive some degree of pleasure from heterosexual relationships, and to pay less attention to their homosexual feelings." LeVay writes that statistical studies support Sigmund Freud's view that on average gay men are more likely than straight men to describe their relationships with their mothers as close and their relationships with their fathers as distant or hostile. However, he is skeptical of Freud's claim that the behavior of parents influences the future sexual orientation of their children, writing that while psychoanalytic theories about homosexuality have not been proven wrong, they are no more plausible than the idea that unidentified flying objects are alien spacecraft. LeVay suggests that boys who become gay may be unmasculine, or otherwise differ from boys who become straight in ways that influence the behavior of parents, and that Freudian theories reverse the direction of causation.
LeVay rejects the view, based on behaviorism, that the sex of a person's first sex partner influences their sexual orientation, arguing that it is contradicted by cross-cultural evidence, including the anthropologist Gilbert Herdt's work on the Sambia, and studies of British boarding schools. He criticized the sexologist John Money, who maintained that sexual orientation develops as part of a process of gender learning, with reference to the case of David Reimer, a man who was unsuccessfully reared as a girl following the destruction of his penis in a botched circumcision. LeVay writes that, contrary to Money's expectations, Reimer, who ultimately decided to live as a man, was sexually attracted to women as an adult, and that there are several similar cases conflicting with Money's learning theory of sexual orientation.
Kinsey Reports
The Kinsey Reports are two books on human sexual behavior, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), written by Alfred Kinsey, Paul Gebhard, Wardell Pomeroy, Clyde Martin and others and published by Saunders. Kinsey was a zoologist at Indiana University and the founder of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (more widely known as the Kinsey Institute).
Biology and sexual orientation
Research conducted in Sweden has suggested that gay and straight men respond differently to two odors that are believed to be involved in sexual arousal. The research showed that when both heterosexual women and gay men are exposed to a testosterone derivative found in men's sweat, a region in the hypothalamus is activated. Heterosexual men, on the other hand, have a similar response to an estrogen-like compound found in women's urine. The conclusion is that sexual attraction, whether same-sex or opposite-sex oriented, operates similarly on a biological level. Researchers have suggested that this possibility could be further explored by studying young subjects to see if similar responses in the hypothalamus are found and then correlating these data with adult sexual orientation.
Sexual desire and intimate relationships
In a study conducted by Regan & Bersched (1996), when asked to freely define sexual desire, 90% of both male and female participants defined the phenomenon consistently with theorists’ definitions of sexual desire; however, despite the tendency for men and women to describe desire in similar ways to clinical definitions in terms of motivation, men and women have been found to characterize the goals of sexual desire differently. Whereas women tend to consider love and emotional intimacy as high ranking goals of sexual desire, men are more likely to consider sexual activity as the primary goal of sexual desire.
Kinsey scale
The Kinsey Reports are two published works, "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" and "Sexual Behavior in the Human male". These reports look into the sexual characteristics and development of the human males and females. Sexuality is examined in the Kinsey scale through the level of homosexuality in each person. The data to scale the participants comes from their "psychosexual responses and/or overt experience" in relation to sexual attraction and activity with the same and opposite sexes. The inclusion of psychosexual responses allows someone with less sexual experience to rank evenly with someone of greater sexual experience.The results found in "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" show a higher number of men who lean towards homosexuality than recorded for the women. Kinsey addresses that the result is contrary to reports that women have more homosexual leanings than men. He poses that such reports are due to the "wishful thinking on the part of such heterosexual males."
Sexual Preference (book)
The anthropologist Gilbert Herdt argued in "Sambia Sexual Culture" (1999) that "Sexual Preference", like the Kinsey scale, places "too much emphasis upon discreet acts of sex and not enough stress upon the cultural context and total developmental outcomes to which those acts are related." He called the study a "quantitative sociological" survey of homosexuality that decontextualizes "the culture and lives at issue", and argued, following the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, that all developmental changes need to be viewed in the context of social structure. Stein described "Sexual Preference" as one of the most detailed and frequently cited retrospective studies relating to sexual orientation in "The Mismeasure of Desire" (1999). In his view, while the study has been criticized on various grounds, including that all of its subjects were living in San Francisco, arguably an atypical place with respect to the sexual orientation of its inhabitants, Bell "et al."′s conclusions about theories attributing sexual orientation to the effects of experience have been accepted and confirmed. He observed that many other studies have been conducted on childhood gender nonconformity partly because of Bell "et al."′s findings relating it to homosexuality.
Sexual script theory
Sexuality is the behavior of human beings with regard to the activities that causes or is associated with sexual arousal. It is influenced by the genetically inherited sexual response patterns, societal attitudes toward sex, and each individual's upbringing. "Physiology sets only very broad limits on human sexuality; most of the enormous variation found among humans results from learning and conditioning. What is deviant in one society may be normal in another. Sexuality covers gender identity, sexual orientation, and actual practices, as well as one's acceptance of these aspects of one's personality, which may be more important than their specifics."
Sharon Moalem
In April 2009, Dr. Moalem's second book "How Sex Works: Why We Look, Smell, Taste, Feel, and Act the Way We Do" was published by HarperCollins. The book examines the scientific reasons why people are attracted to one another. The topics covered include the evolutionary underpinnings of sexual attraction, monogamy, and sexual orientation.
Reward theory of attraction
In 2000 animal studies were conducted that supported that attraction is associated with elevated activity in central dopamine. In the experiment a female lab-raised prairie vole was mated with a male, and formed a distinct preference for him associated with a 50% increase of dopamine. When a dopamine antagonist was injected into the reward region of the brain, she no longer had the preference for the male.
Reciprocal liking
Reciprocal liking, also known as reciprocity of attraction, is a term used to describe the act of feeling attracted to someone only upon learning or becoming aware that the said person is attracted to you. Reciprocal liking has a significant impact on who we find attractive and who we choose to be friends with.
Human sexuality
The ability of a person's physical and other qualities to create a sexual interest in others is the basis of their use in advertising, music video, pornography, film, and other visual media, as well as in modeling, sex work and other occupations.
Sexuality and space
Sexuality and space is a field of study within human geography. The phrase encompasses all relationships and interactions between human sexuality, space and place, themes studied within cultural geography, i.e., environmental and architectural psychology, urban sociology, gender studies, queer studies, socio-legal studies, planning, housing studies and criminology.
Wicked Attraction
"Wicked Attraction" uses some of the world’s leading criminal psychologists to explore couples who kill by delving into the minds of some of the most infamous criminals in history. It seeks to explain how murdering duos find each other, how they select their victims, and what motivates them. Each hour of "Wicked Attraction" features one case, and takes the audience through the twists and turns of the killers' deadly relationship and law enforcement's investigation and arrest of each murdering couple.
Demographics of sexual orientation
Another significant distinction can be made between what medical statisticians call incidence and prevalence. For example, even if two studies agree on a common criterion for defining a sexual orientation, one study might regard this as applying to any person who has ever met this criterion, whereas another might only regard him/her as being so if they had done so during the year of the survey. According to the American Psychological Association, sexual orientation refers to an "enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions to men, women, or both sexes", as well as to "a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions." Therefore, a person can be celibate and still identify as being bisexual or homosexual based on romantic proclivities.
Demographics of sexual orientation
Two of the most famous studies of the demographics of human sexual orientation were Dr. Alfred Kinsey's "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953). These studies used a seven-point spectrum to define sexual behavior, from 0 for completely heterosexual to 6 for completely homosexual. Kinsey concluded that a small percentage of the population were to one degree or another bisexual (falling on the scale from 1 to 5). He also reported that 37% of men in the U.S. had achieved orgasm through contact with another male after adolescence and 13% of women had achieved orgasm through contact with another woman.
National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles
The National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (NATSAL) is the name given to a series of face-to-face surveys of people in the United Kingdom regarding their sexual behaviour and patterns. The three rounds of interviews completed to date are NATSAL-1 (1990–91) and NATSAL-2 (2000-01) and NATSAL-3 (2010–12). The results are widely used in research and policy making. NATSAL's principal investigator is Anne Johnson, a professor at University College, London, and co-leader Kaye Wellings, a professor at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
Sexual orientation
Innate bisexuality is an idea introduced by Sigmund Freud. According to this theory, all humans are born bisexual in a very broad sense of the term, that of incorporating general aspects of both sexes. In Freud's view, this was true anatomically and therefore also psychologically, with sexual attraction to both sexes being one part of this psychological bisexuality. Freud believed that in the course of sexual development the masculine side would normally become dominant in men and the feminine side in women, but that as adults everyone still has desires derived from both the masculine and the feminine sides of their natures. Freud did not claim that everyone is bisexual in the sense of feeling the same level of sexual attraction to both genders.
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction or sexual behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to people of the same sex. It "also refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions."
Heterosexuality
Heterosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction or sexual behavior between persons of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions" to persons of the opposite sex; it "also refers to a person's sense of identity based on those attractions, related behaviors, and membership in a community of others who share those attractions."
Alfred Kinsey
Alfred Charles Kinsey (; June 23, 1894 – August 25, 1956) was an American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and sexologist who in 1947 founded the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University, previously known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. He is best known for writing "Sexual Behavior in the Human Male" (1948) and "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" (1953), also known as the Kinsey Reports, as well as the Kinsey scale. Kinsey's research on human sexuality, foundational to the field of sexology, provoked controversy in the 1940s and 1950s. His work has influenced social and cultural values in the United States, as well as internationally.
Sexual arousal
While human sexuality is well understood, scientists do not completely grasp how other animals relate sexually. However, current research studies suggest that many animals, like humans, enjoy sexual relations that are not limited to reproduction. Dolphins and bonobos, for example, are both well known to use sex as a "social tool to strengthen and maintain bonds." Ethologists have long documented the exchanges of sex to promote group cohesion in social animals. Cementing social bondage is one of the most prominent theorized selective advantages of group selection theory. Experts in the evolution of sex such as John Maynard Smith advocate for the idea that the exchange of sexual favors helps congeal and localize the assortment of alleles in isolated population and therefore is potentially a very strong force in evolution. Maynard Smith has also written extensively on the "seminal fluid swapping theory" logistic application of the assortment of alleles as a more accurate synthetic depiction of the Hardy–Weinberg principle in cases of severely interbreeding populations.
Genetic sexual attraction
Although reported frequently as anecdote in the field of psychology, there are no studies showing that people are sexually attracted to those genetically similar to them. Studies of MHC genes show that unrelated people are less attracted to those genetically similar to them. However, in mice, this lack of attraction can be reversed by adoption. Whilst it has been documented that sexual attraction can occur between related individuals in some cases, it is not clear that calling this attraction GSA is appropriate.
Bisexuality
Bisexuality is romantic or sexual attraction to both males and females. The American Psychological Association states that "sexual orientation falls along a continuum. In other words, someone does not have to be exclusively homosexual or heterosexual, but can feel varying degrees of both. Sexual orientation develops across a person's lifetime–different people realize at different points in their lives that they are heterosexual, bisexual or homosexual."
Sexual addiction
Sexual addiction, also known as sex addiction, is a state characterized by [[compulsive]] participation or engagement in [[Human sexual activity|sexual activity]], particularly [[sexual intercourse]], despite negative consequences.
Supernormal Stimuli
Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose is a book by Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2010. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. The book argues that human instincts for food, sex, and territorial protection evolved for life on the savannah 10,000 years ago, not for today's densely populated technological world. Our instincts have not had time to adapt to the rapid changes of modern life.
The book takes its title from Nikolaas Tinbergen's concept in animal ethology of the supernormal stimulus, the phenomena by which insects, birds, and fish in his experiments could be lured by a dummy object which exaggerated one or more characteristic of the natural stimulus object such as giant brilliant blue plaster eggs which birds preferred to sit on in preference to their own. Barrett extends the concept to humans and outlines how supernormal stimuli are a driving force behind today’s most pressing problems, including modern warfare, obesity and other fitness problems, while also explaining the appeal of television, video games, and pornography as social outlets.Evolutionary psychologist Deirdre Barrett borrows Mr. Tinbergen's phrase—and builds on his original insight—for her brief and timely study of "how primal urges overran their evolutionary purpose," wreaking havoc along the way... Ms. Barrett does a good job of explaining the scientific roots of today's supernormal-stimuli overload and of tracing its effects—from the ubiquity of hormone-triggering pornography and its bad influence on personal relations to the news media's hysterical coverage of child abductions and the ways in which such coverage creates the impression that a rare phenomenon is commonplace... Her book's biggest weakness: the failure to weigh the costs of supernormal stimuli against their often substantial benefits. —The Wall Street Journal.
Attraction to disability
Contemporary sexology does not consider the attraction problematic unless exercising it infringes the rights of one of the parties and/or those of third parties. Explanations include:The DPW community constantly debates the origins of the attraction ("the Why?"). "The Amelotatist", reporting a poll of 195 devotees was a community contribution and the first synthesis of explanations. A 2005 straw poll in two DPW fora revealed that in childhood many respondents (often first or only children) felt alienated from peers, forming solitary interests in "inter alia", transportation, or collecting. This may indicate that empathy with the disabled, subject to exclusion in most cultures, is among the motivations for the attraction. It may also indicate that admiration is at play in the attraction, inasmuch as the disabled perforce overcome inhibitions similar to those many DPWs face, as hinted above.
J. Michael Bailey
A third line of research has examined sexual arousal patterns and their relation to sexual orientation in men and women. This research has focused on both genital and self-reported sexual arousal measures. For example, Bailey's lab showed that men's genital sexual arousal patterns closely tracked their sexual orientations, but women's did not. In 2005 this research produced a study which questioned whether male bisexuality exists in the way that it is sometimes described; the study was based on results of penile plethysmograph testing. The testing found that of men who identified themselves as bisexual, 75% were only aroused genitally by sexual imagery of men, and 25% were only aroused genitally by sexual imagery of women. They concluded: "Male bisexuality appears primarily to represent a style of interpreting or reporting sexual arousal rather than a distinct pattern of genital sexual arousal." The study received wide attention after a "New York Times" piece on the study. A 2011 study using similar methodology filtered participants more stringently, requiring at least two sexual partners of each sex and at least one romantic relationship lasting three months or longer; this study finds both genital and subjective arousal, though it is not clear which arousal pattern is more prevalent in the modern bisexual community.
Sexual Preference (book)
Seen as likely to provoke controversy even before its publication, "Sexual Preference" received considerable media attention, and mixed reviews. Critics questioned Bell "et al."′s reliance upon a statistical technique, originally developed for use in the biological sciences, called path analysis, disputed the representativeness of their sample of homosexuals, pointed out the difficulty and potential unreliability of adult recall of childhood feeling and the vague and general nature of the questions respondents were asked, and disagreed with Bell "et al."′s suggestion that sexual orientation is innate. Nevertheless, some reviewers complimented "Sexual Preference" for its authors' challenge to established views about the causes of homosexuality, and it eventually came to be considered a classic work. It is one of the most frequently cited retrospective studies relating to sexual orientation, credited by psychologists with disproving psychoanalytic theories about the development of homosexuality. It was the last study on homosexuality released by the Institute for Sex Research.
Jonathan Ned Katz
Jonathan Ned Katz (born 1938) is an American historian of human sexuality who has focused on same-sex attraction and changes in the social organization of sexuality over time. His works focus on the idea, rooted in social constructionism, that the categories with which we describe and define human sexuality are historically and culturally specific, along with the social organization of sexual activity, desire, relationships, and sexual identities.