Evolutionary approaches: Integrating pornography preferences, short-term mating, and infidelity

Pornography's Ubiquitous External Ejaculation: Predictors of Perceptions

One of the most contentious topics in the sexual arena is that of pornography. While some researchers focus on the costs and benefits of consumption, others focus on questions surrounding the objectification or degradation of women, with relatively little focus on the men involved, and the appeal of visual sexual stimuli more generally, including what that may tell us about the sexual interests of the consumers. In this study, we focus on what factors influence men's and women's perceptions of sexually explicit images, in particular the ubiquitous external ejaculation. Sex differences in perceptions of the images are examined as well as the influence of the emotional affect of the recipient of the ejaculation, the sexual orientation of the participant (are they looking at an image of their preferred sex or not), and a number of individual difference factors, including religiosity, Dark Triad personality traits, mate value, short-term mating strategy, and disgust sensitivity. Overall, the largest influences on perceptions were the direct effects of target emotional affect and sex, sex of viewer, sexual orientation of viewer, short-term mating orientation, and level of sexual disgust. In addition, substantial variation in perceptions was explained by the interaction between sex, sexual orientation, and target sex. The importance of positive affect in the images as well as the lack of association with psychopathy again suggests that the appeal (or at least the ubiquity of the images in pornographic material) is not rooted in degradation, but in some other aspect of short-term sexual psychology.

Development and validation of a Japanese translation of the K-SF-42

In this study, we conducted the translation and validation of the K-SF-42 in Japan (Figueredo, 2017). The K-SF-42 is a new short form of the Arizona Life History Battery. We obtained empirical evidence that the original seven-factor structure could be applied to the Japanese translated version of K-SF-42 (K-SF-42-J). We also observed good internal consistency of the seven scales of K-SF-42-J. The multi-group confirmatory factor analysis findings suggest that the K-SF-42-J can be used in both sexes and diverse age groups. The K-SF-42-J scales showed similar correlates as the English original, with higher scores of other life history strategy measurement, trait emotional intelligence, well-being, and cultural and social resources in childhood. Use of the K-SF-42-J will allow researchers with Japanese speaking samples to integrate their findings with the existing life history strategy research literature. The brevity of the K-SF-42-J will be appealing to researchers who are concerned about taxing the time and motivation of their participants.

Perceptions of Sexual Images: Factors Influencing Responses to the Ubiquitous External Ejaculation

The debate over pornography has drawn attention to sex differences not only in the frequency of pornography consumption but also in the different ways males and females may perceive sexually explicit images and respond to them. Some of these differences may be due to sex differences in a variety of factors including sexual strategies and disgust, in particular, disgust related to pathogen avoidance. There is a large literature that focuses on how pathogen avoidance has shaped human behavior from political ideology to in-group/outgroup behavior to sexual risk taking/avoidance. This study examined sex differences in perceptions and how they are influenced by the emotional context of the image as well as individual difference factors, including disgust sensitivity, mate value, sociosexuality, and sexual orientation. Participants viewed a series of sexually explicit images of external ejaculations and rated them in terms of being positive, neutral, or negative. The factors accounting for the greatest variance in perceptions were target affect and sex, sexual orientation, and respondent sex, followed by pathogen and sexual disgust, self-perceived mate value, and sociosexual attitudes and desire.