Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The study of the evolution of human sexuality offers the promise of better understanding fundamental aspects of human nature, including the choice of a romantic partner, the development of the body and brain, and the role of sexual arousal in everyday life. This proposal focuses on better understanding one aspect of human sexuality: sexual arousal. Researchers have discovered that sexual arousal can be measured in many different ways--by asking people how they feel, by measuring physiological indicators such as heart rate, or by directly measuring blood flow to the genitals--and that these different methods do not always give the same answer, especially in women. Sometimes people say they are not aroused at all, but their genitals tell a different story. Researchers have concluded that this discrepancy is real and not simply due to lying, self-deception, or poor measurement of genital responses. In fact, there is a large sex difference in sexual concordance, that is, how subjective and physiological measures correlate with each other. Men are highly concordant, whereas women are not. This proposal is about understanding the reasons for this difference. The research program aims to: (1) develop a new measure of female sexual arousal based on genital lubrication; (2) determine whether female genital arousal is automatic, like a reflex (even though subjective arousal is not); (3) discover contextual factors that affect concordance (e.g., exposure to relevant contextual cues such as the face of a partner); (4) determine whether genital arousal serves a protective function in women (i.e., the prevention of injuries due to unwanted sexual intercourse); and (5) find out whether the sex difference in concordance is part of a more general sex difference in how physiological states affect emotional experiences. The more general aims of this research are to better understand the evolved functions of sexual arousal and the development of sexual interests.