Evidence map›Paper›PMID 29566568›Full record

ArticleEvolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior

Sexual Responses Are Facilitated by High-Order Contextual Cues in Females but Not in Males.

Jorge Ponseti, Kim Dähnke, Leona Fischermeier, Hannah Gerwinn, Amelie Kluth, Jens Müller, Susanne Vogel, Aglaja Stirn

Abstract read
In one paragraph

Article in Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

8 authors.

Jorge Ponseti1 Medical School, Institute of Sexual Medicine, Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.
Kim Dähnke1 Medical School, Institute of Sexual Medicine, Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.
Leona Fischermeier1 Medical School, Institute of Sexual Medicine, Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.
Hannah Gerwinn1 Medical School, Institute of Sexual Medicine, Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.
Amelie Kluth1 Medical School, Institute of Sexual Medicine, Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.
Jens Müller1 Medical School, Institute of Sexual Medicine, Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.
Susanne Vogel1 Medical School, Institute of Sexual Medicine, Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.
Aglaja Stirn1 Medical School, Institute of Sexual Medicine, Forensic Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Kiel University, Kiel, Germany.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Sexual responses are thought to be controlled by a brain module called the sexual module. Sexual strategies of males and females vary to a great extent, and sexual responses of males and females may be affected by their sexual strategies. However, the current view of the sexual module is that of a unisex module. This might be questionable since brain modules are defined as evolved cognitive mechanisms to solve adaptive problems which are different for males and females. We hypothesize that the sexual module responds differently in the presence of complex (high-order) contextual cues that are related to gender-dimorphic sexual strategies in males and females. We conducted a priming experiment in which stimuli related to sexual strategies were disentangled from their sexual meaning. Nonsexual priming pictures related to either economic resources or social interactions preceded a sexual-target picture in order to test whether the primes were able to modulate the subjective sexual response to the sexual target. In a control condition, priming pictures without relation to mating preferences but with similar emotional impact were presented. In males, sexual responses were similar in the experimental and control conditions. In females, however, primes related to economic resources or social interactions modulated sexual arousal significantly more than the control primes. Our findings suggest that brain modules dedicated to process the experimental primes were functionally connected with the sexual module in females more than in males, making females' sexual responses more prone to the impact of high-order cultural cues than males' sexual responses. A gender-dimorphic connectivity of the sexual module may be the way in which gender-dimorphic sexual strategies are implemented in the human mind.

Indexed as

CuesSex CharacteristicsSocial PerceptionAdultFemaleHumansMalePattern Recognition, VisualSexual BehaviorYoung Adultmating preferencesparental investment theoryprimingsexual arousalsexual modulesexual strategies

Identifiers

PMID29566568
PMCPMC10481071

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY-NC
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.