In our society visual stimuli appear to be of great importance. Prime evidence is the emphasis we often place on physical appearance, including such activities as personal grooming, wearing the right clothes, and the extensive use of cosmetics. Therefore it is not surprising that vision is second only to touch in the hierarchy of stimuli that most people view as sexually arousing.
The popularity of sexually explicit men’s magazines in our society suggests that the human male is more aroused by visual stimuli than is the female. Early research seemed to support this conclusion. Kinsey found that more men than women reported being sexually excited by visual stimuli, such as pinup erotica and stag shows (Kinsey et al., 1948, 1953). However, this finding reflects several social influences, including the greater cultural inhibitions attached to such behavior in women at the time of his research and the simple fact that men had been provided with far more opportunities to develop an appetite for such stimuli. Furthermore, many women found the old-style porn films and videos, which were made to appeal exclusively to men, to be offensive and insensitive and thus not something they would acknowledge as a source of sexual arousal (Striar & Bartlik, 2000). This interpretation is supported by later research that used physiological recording devices (see Chapter 2) to measure sexual arousal under controlled laboratory conditions. These studies have demonstrated strong similarities in the physical responses of males and females to visual erotica (Murnen & Stockton, 1997; Rubinsky et al., 1987). Most women display physiologically measurable arousal while watching erotic films, even those who report no feelings of being aroused (Laan & Everaerd, 1996). Research findings suggest that when sexual arousal is measured by self-reports rather than by physiological devices, women are less inclined than men to report being sexually aroused by visual erotica (Chivers et al., 2010; Koukounas & McCabe, 1997). This finding could reflect the persistence of cultural influences that
make women reluctant to acknowledge being aroused by filmed erotica, or it could indicate that females have greater difficulty than males identifying signs of sexual arousal in Critical Thinking Question their bodies, or it could be a combination of these factors.