Keywords
Female sexual dysfunction, disgust, electromyography, heart rate deceleration
Abstract
Existing models of female sexual dysfunction (FSD) are broad and do not provide information about how to improve existing interventions. The purpose of the current study is to extend the empirical application of a disgust model of FSD (de Jong, van Overveld, & Borg, 2013) to a population of young women reporting difficulties with sexual desire and/or arousal and related distress. Sixty college-aged females participated in the study and were placed into two groups based upon their reports of sexual functioning and sexual distress: a control group (i.e., no sexual difficulties or distress) and a clinical group (i.e., difficulties with sexual desire and/or arousal and accompanying distress). Participants were attached to physiological equipment and shown images displaying neutral, positive, disgusting, and erotic content. It was hypothesized that the clinical group would show more evidence of disgust (via affective and autonomic responses) than the control group. Consistent with hypotheses, no group differences were found in any of the affective or autonomic measures during presentation of the neutral, positive, or disgust images. Group differences during presentation of the erotic images (i.e., in facial EMG, heart rate, and self-report affective ratings) and follow-up analyses provided preliminary evidence for generalizing the disgust model of female sexual dysfunction beyond disorders of sexual pain, at least among some women. Exploratory analyses implicated a relationship between a history of sexual victimization and self-report disgust ratings of erotic images. Future research should further explore these relationships in order to shed more light on how disgust-based mechanisms impact the onset and maintenance of female sexual dysfunction.
Notes
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Graduation Date
2015
Semester
Spring
Advisor
Cassisi, Jeffrey
Degree
Master of Science (M.S.)
College
College of Sciences
Department
Psychology
Degree Program
Psychology; Clinical Psychology
Format
application/pdf
Identifier
CFE0005601
URL
http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0005601
Language
English
Release Date
May 2020
Length of Campus-only Access
5 years
Access Status
Masters Thesis (Open Access)
STARS Citation
De Pesa, Natasha, "Affective and Autonomic Responses to Erotic Images among Young Women with and without Sexual Difficulties" (2015). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1336.
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/1336