Bored stiff: The relationship between meaninglessness, sexual sensation seeking, and promiscuous attitudes via boredom susceptibility

The Sexual Incentive Motivation Model and Its Clinical Applications

Sexual motivation (desire) requires the simultaneous presence of an active central motive state and a stimulus with sexual significance. Once activated, sexual motivation leads to visceral responses and approach behaviors directed toward the emitter of the sexual stimulus. In humans, such behaviors follow cognitive evaluation of the context, including predictions of the approached individual's response. After successful approach and establishment of physical contact, manifest sexual activities may be initiated. Sexual interaction is associated with and followed by a state of positive affect in most animals, whereas aversive consequences may be experienced by humans. The affective reactions may become associated with stimuli present during sexual interaction, and these stimuli may thereby alter their incentive properties. Here we show how the incentive motivation model can be used to explain the origins and possible treatments of sexual dysfunctions, notably disorders of desire. We propose that associations formed between negative outcomes of sexual interaction and the salient stimuli, for example, the partner, underlies hypoactive desire disorder. Highly positive outcomes of sexual interaction enhance the incentive value of the stimuli present, and eventually lead to hyperactive sexual desire. Treatments aim to alter the impact of sexual incentives, mainly by modifying cognitive processes.

Self-objectification in women predicts approval motivation in online self-presentation

Researchers have examined self-objectification - viewing oneself as an object rather than a subject - in terms of its impact on intrapersonal factors, such as mental health and cognitive performance. However, few have examined how self-objectification relates to interpersonal factors. The present research addressed this gap by testing the impact of self-objectification on social approval motivation among women. Study 1 (n = 103) found that individual differences in self-objectification correlated positively with approval motivation. Study 2 (n = 94) replicated these results and found that women who reported higher self-objectification were more willing to modify their social media profile pictures unrealistically. In Study 3 (n = 100), higher self-objectifying women were more willing to unrealistically modify their profile pictures even if this exceeded normative levels, which was replicated in Study 4 (n = 199). These results suggest that women's self-objectification is associated with a desire for approval from others and this desire manifests in a willingness to modify self-presentation.

Testing the Associations Between Adult Playfulness and Sensation Seeking: A SEM Analysis of Librarians and Police Officers

Playfulness is an understudied personality trait in adults. We examined the relationships between facets of adult playfulness and sensation seeking (SS) in distant vocational groups, namely, librarians (N = 339) and police officers (N = 399). First, manifest and latent group comparisons (measurement invariance [MI] analysis) showed that police officers were higher in SS than librarians, while we found no group differences for playfulness. Second, structural equation modeling (SEM) analyses showed that playfulness was widely positively related to SS, and findings were replicated across groups. However, the effects were of small to moderate size, and playfulness and SS shared between 4 and 22% variance. Our findings indicate that playfulness is not redundant with SS. Our study extends the understanding of adult playfulness by clarifying its overlap and distinctiveness from SS.