Female Genital Cutting Restricts Sociosexuality Among the Igbo People of Southeast Nigeria

Female genital cutting (FGC) involves partial or total removal of the external female genitalia and causes detrimental effects on woman’s physical and psychological health. Estimates suggest that 130 million women and girls have experienced FGC worldwide. A frequently cited reason for performing this procedure is to restrict female sexuality. To test this idea, we examined women’s willingness to engage in uncommitted sexual relations (sociosexuality) among the traditional Igbo community in Southeastern Nigeria, a region in which FGC is prevalent. Women with FGC reported more restricted sociosexuality in all three domains (attitude, behavior, and desire) compared to women without FGC. Our results suggest that FGC significantly restricts female extra-pair behavior. We provide evidence that this practice is partially attributable to sexual conflict over reproduction by decreasing paternity uncertainty and increasing the reproductive costs to women.

Of mice and men: what animal research can tell us about context effects on automatic responses in humans

Automatic responses play a central role in many areas of psychology. Counter to views that such responses are relatively rigid and inflexible, a large body of research has shown that they are highly context-sensitive. Research on animal learning and animal behavior has a strong potential to provide a deeper understanding of such context effects by revealing remarkable parallels between the functional properties of automatic responses in human and nonhuman animals. These parallels involve the contextual modulation of attitude formation and change (automatic evaluation), and the role of contextual contingencies in shaping the particular action tendencies in response to a stimulus (automatic behavior). Theoretical concepts of animal research not only provide novel insights into the processes and representations underlying context effects on automatic responses in humans; they also offer new perspectives on the interface between affect, cognition, and motivation.