| Abstract: | Male subjects (N = 128) with high or low sex guilt either were or were not threatened with shock (fear arousal manipulation) and then viewed either an erotic or a neutral film (sex arousal manipulation). Then all subjects viewed and rated slides of attractive women and slides of landscapes (neutral control slides). If fear arousal was specifically transferred to sexual arousal as is often predicted rather than simply causing a general increase in arousal, then it would be expected that subjects who had been exposed to the threat would show high arousal in response to the slides of women and low arousal to the slides of landscapes, whereas subjects who had not been threatened would show low arousal to both the slides of women and landscapes. Physiological (pulse rate, skin resistance), self-report, and word association measures consistently indicated that (a) both of the arousal manipulations were effective, (b) the slides of women were arousing, (c) sex guilt influenced responses as would be expected from previous research, but (d) did not indicate support for arousal transference. These findings (a) provide information concerning the influence of guilt on drives, (b) raise questions about the transfer of arousal that was noted in less controlled investigations, and (c) highlight the need for additional controls in research of this type. |
