Sexual Attraction - Sexual Attraction and High Anxiety

Sexual Attraction and High Anxiety

A research conducted by Donald G Dutton and Arthur P. Aron aimed to find the relation between sexual attraction and high anxiety conditions. In doing so, 85 male participants were contacted by an attractive female interviewer at either a fear-arousing bridge or a normal bridge. Conclusively, it was shown that the male participants who were asked to by the female interviewer to perform on the fear-arousing bridge, wrote more sexual content in the stories and attempted, with greater effort, to contact the female interviewer after the experiment than those male participants who performed the TAT (Thematic Apperception Test) on the normal bridge. Another test was done, a male participant, chosen from a group of 80, was given anticipated shocks. Along with the male was an attractive female confederate, who was also being shocked. The experiment showed that the male's sexual imagery in the TAT was much higher when self shock was anticipated and not when the female confederate shock was anticipated.