Sex guilt,trait anxiety,and females' subjective sexual arousal to erotica

Subjective sexual arousal and affective reactions of 80 college women to explicit sex films were studied in a 2 (sex guilt) × 2 (trait anxiety) × 2 (films) design. There was a decline in sexual arousal to a film of oral-genital sex and a decline in sex guilt in the present sample in comparison to a similar sample from this laboratory 8 years ago. High-sex-guilt women reported fewer genital sensations and rated themselves lower on sexual arousal during and after the films than did their counterparts less disposed to guilt over sex. High-sex-guilt women reported more affective guilt, disgust, and anxiety-fear as a consequence of viewing an explicit sex film than women below the median on sex guilt. High-trait-anxiety women reported more intense genital sensations and rated their sexual arousal as higher following the films than low-trait-anxiety women. Women above the median on trait anxiety reported more subsequent anxiety-fear and depression-distress following the films than low-scoring women. These results were discussed from the perspective of Izard's differential emotions theory, which regards anxiety as a variable pattern of fundamental emotions rather than as a functional unity.This research was supported in part by a National Science Foundation Grant to the University of Connecticut Computer Center. The authors wish to thank Wendy Cunningham and Linda Wildes for serving as experimenters.     

Hedonic arousal, time intervals, and excitation transfer

Zillmann’s (1978, 1983) excitation transfer theory was tested in relation to arousal processes opposite in hedonic valence. Sixty female subjects, randomly assigned to six experimental conditions, were initially exposed either to arousal stimulation positive in hedonic valence (sexual humor), or to arousal stimulation negative in hedonic valence (insulting remarks), or to a neutral unarousing task. In each condition, half of the subjects rated mildly arousing positively valenced male models’ photographs on several scales either immediately or with a 4 minute delay following prior arousal. In support of Zillmann’s theory, subjects in the positive hedonic arousal condition gave significantly lower photograph ratings on the arousal-related scales at the immediate, than at the delayed, rating time. However, contrary to Zillmann’s theory, the pattern of these ratings was reversed in the negative hedonic arousal condition, with the significantly higher ratings at the immediate, rather than delayed, rating time. Also, there were significant differences in these ratings among all three conditions both at the immediate and at the delayed rating time, but, as predicted, no significant differences were obtained for these ratings between the rating times in the control unarousing condition. The differences in excitation transfer between arousal processes positive and negative in hedonic valence may be due to their differences on a temporal dimension with regard to the speed of accumulation and the speed of dissipation of each arousal type.     

Agency, subjective time, and other minds

Intentional binding refers to a temporal attraction in the perceived times of actions and effects. So far, it has solely been investigated using judgments of the perceived time of actions or their effects. The authors report 3 experiments using an alternative method: the estimation of a time interval between a voluntary action and its subsequent effect. Interval estimates were obtained for intervals bounded by different kinds of actions and effects: The actions were either performed by the participants themselves or by the experimenter. The effects, in turn, were movements either applied to the body of the participant or to the experimenter. First, the results validated interval estimation as a method for exploring action awareness. Second, intentional binding was stronger for self-generated compared with observed actions, indicating that private information about the action contributes to action awareness. In contrast, intentional binding did not depend on whether a somatic effect was applied to the participant's or to another person's body. Third, for self-generated actions, external events gave rise to a stronger intentional binding than did somatic effects. This finding indicates that intentional binding especially links actions with their consequences in the external world.     

Decision time,subjective probability,and task difficulty

This study analyzed the relationships between decision time, subjective probability, and task difficulty in the context of a probability assessment task involving memory search. The results indicate that decision time and subjective probability do not yield identical functions. Also, decision time increases as subjective task difficulty increases. A similar relationship obtains between decision time and a measure of objective task difficulty. These latter two findings are inconsistent with Hogarth’s (1975) prediction of a nonmonotonic relationship between decision time and task difficulty.     

Happiness, time consciousness, and subjective life expectancy.

84 men and 141 women enrolled at a university reported their sexes and ages, rated their happiness and their time consciousness, and estimated how many more years they expected to live. Men significantly overestimated their subjective life span compared to actuarial data. Women (but not men) who were happier tended to be younger, had greater subjective life expectancies, and felt that they had lived a smaller percentage of their total lives. Both older men and older women tended to be more time conscious.     

Effect of Transcendental Meditation versus resting on physiological and subjective arousal

On four successive days, 10 highly trained and experienced meditators were asked to relax for 5 minutes, meditate for 20 minutes, and then relax for 5 minutes. In contrast, 10 other subjects who had no training or experience with meditation were asked to relax for 5 minutes, rest for 20 minutes, and then relax for 5 minutes. Physiological arousal (heart rate, skin resistance, respiration rate, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure) and subjective arousal (cognitive, somatic, relaxation) were measured throughout the experiment. Results indicated that (a) prior to meditating or resting, meditators tended to have higher heart rates and diastolic blood pressure than did nonmeditators, (b) meditation was associated with generally reduced arousal, but (c) while meditating, meditators did not evidence lower levels of arousal than nonmeditators did while resting. This investigation employed controls, which were not used in previous investigations, and the results place qualifications on previously reported results. The results have implications for the study of personality functioning, stress management, and psychotherapy.     

Beyond intensity: Spectral features effectively predict music-induced subjective arousal

Emotions in music are conveyed by a variety of acoustic cues. Notably, the positive association between sound intensity and arousal has particular biological relevance. However, although amplitude normalization is a common procedure used to control for intensity in music psychology research, direct comparisons between emotional ratings of original and amplitude-normalized musical excerpts are lacking.

In this study, 30 nonmusicians retrospectively rated the subjective arousal and pleasantness induced by 84 six-second classical music excerpts, and an additional 30 nonmusicians rated the same excerpts normalized for amplitude. Following the cue-redundancy and Brunswik lens models of acoustic communication, we hypothesized that arousal and pleasantness ratings would be similar for both versions of the excerpts, and that arousal could be predicted effectively by other acoustic cues besides intensity.

Although the difference in mean arousal and pleasantness ratings between original and amplitude-normalized excerpts correlated significantly with the amplitude adjustment, ratings for both sets of excerpts were highly correlated and shared a similar range of values, thus validating the use of amplitude normalization in music emotion research. Two acoustic parameters, spectral flux and spectral entropy, accounted for 65% of the variance in arousal ratings for both sets, indicating that spectral features can effectively predict arousal. Additionally, we confirmed that amplitude-normalized excerpts were adequately matched for loudness. Overall, the results corroborate our hypotheses and support the cue-redundancy and Brunswik lens models.     

Physical activity,screen time and subjective well-being among children

Background/ObjectiveThe aim of the study was to explore the differences between physical activity and/or screen time levels on cognitive (Life satisfaction LS) and affective (Positive affect, PA and Negative affect NA) components of subjective well-being (SWB) in children.MethodThis cross-sectional study enrolled 1,540 children (1,040 boys, 8–12 years old). LS, PA, NA, physical activity and screen time were assessed with validated questionnaires.ResultsChildren who reported 3 days per week of physical activity or less had lower LS and PA than counterparts with ≥6 days of physical activity per week (p < .05). Participants who reported 2 hours per day or less of screen time had lower NA than counterparts with 4 hours per day or more of screen time (p < .05). Also, children who meet physical activity guidelines have higher LS and PA compared to inactive peers, even with high screen time. In contrast, excessive screen time was also related with NA independent of the level of physical activity.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that physical activity is related with positive feelings and LS, but does not eliminate the effect of screen time on negative feelings among Chilean children.     

Visual onset expands subjective time

We report a distortion of subjective time perception in which the duration of a first interval is perceived to be longer than the succeeding interval of the same duration. The amount of time expansion depends on the onset type defining the first interval. When a stimulus appears abruptly, its duration is perceived to be longer than when it appears following a stationary array. The difference in the processing time for the stimulus onset and motion onset, measured as reaction times, agrees with the difference in time expansion. Our results suggest that initial transient responses for a visual onset serve as a temporal marker for time estimation, and a systematic change in the processing time for onsets affects perceived time.     

Attention and the subjective expansion of time

During brief, dangerous events, such as car accidents and robberies, many people report that events seem to pass in slow motion, as if time had slowed down. We have measured a similar, although less dramatic, effect in response to unexpected, nonthreatening events. We attribute the subjective expansion of time to the engagement of attention and its influence on the amount of perceptual information processed. We term the effect time's subjective expansion (TSE) and examine here the objective temporal dynamics of these distortions. When a series of stimuli are shown in succession, the low-probability oddball stimulus in the series tends to last subjectively longer than the high-probability stimulus even when they last the same objective duration. In particular, (1) there is a latency of at least 120 msec between stimulus onset and the onset of TSE, which may be preceded by subjective temporal contraction; (2) there is a peak in TSE at which subjective time is particularly distorted at a latency of 225 msec after stimulus onset; and (3) the temporal dynamics of TSE are approximately the same in the visual and the auditory domains. Two control experiments (in which the methods of magnitude estimation and stimulus reproduction were used) replicated the temporal dynamics of TSE revealed by the method of constant stimuli, although the initial peak was not apparent with these methods. In addition, a third, control experiment (in which the method of single stimuli was used) showed that TSE in the visual domain can occur because of semantic novelty, rather than image novelty per se. Overall, the results support the view that attentional orienting underlies distortions in perceived duration.     

The effects of distraction,performance demand,stimulus explicitness and personality on objective and subjective measures of male sexual arousal

The interaction of several parameters known to influence sexual arousal was investigated in a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design. Distraction, performance demand, and the sexual explicitness of the arousing film were manipulated, with 32 male subjects randomly assigned to the experimental groups. Sexual arousal was elicited by either an explicit or nonexplicit videotape; level of performance demand was determined by one of two sets of experimental instructions: distraction, a within-subject factor, was produced by tone presentations. Arousal was assessed by both penile tumescence and a continuous subjective measure: marked individual differences were found in the degree to which these measures covaried. The results indicated a strong effect of distraction on tumescence, though none on subjectively reported arousal. Conversely. degree of film explicitness had a marked effect on subjective arousal without influencing tumescence. The performance-demand main effect was nonsignificant; however, a significant distraction x demand interaction for maximum tumescence was evident. Additional analyses indicated the predictive value of certain personality measures.     

Stress specificities: differential effects of coping style, gender, and type of stressor on autonomic arousal, facial expression, and subjective feeling

In this study several factors considered to be relevant in mediating stress arousal were experimentally manipulated. Ss selected for the coping styles anxiety denying, low anxiety, and high anxiety were confronted with both low- and high-arousal-inducing situations, using 2 different types of stressors (cognitive vs. emotional) in each case. Arousal reactions were measured in 3 response modalities: verbal report of subjective experience; nonverbal, nonvocal behavior; and physiological reactions. The results reveal complex interactions between type and degree of stress, coping style, and gender of Ss, confirming findings on vocal parameters of stress. These complex interactions are discussed with respect to the possibility that Ss' evaluation of situation characteristics may be influenced by coping styles and gender, resulting in differential reaction patterns.