576 research outputs found

    Social comparison tendencies and the reward value of same-sex beauty among heterosexual women

    Get PDF
    Previous studies have suggested that heterosexual women, but not heterosexual men, find same sex beauty rewarding. This finding has been attributed to a “greater bisexual interest among heterosexual women”, but no other explanations have been offered or tested. The current study aimed to explore social comparison tendencies as a potential alternate explanation to this previously observed finding. Twenty-three heterosexual women completed a series of questionnaires designed to assess their social comparison tendencies (the social comparison orientation scale, the physical appearance comparison scale, and the intrasexual competition scale). They also completed a “pay-per-view” keypress task to measure the reward value of attractive female faces. The previous finding, that same-sex beauty holds reward value for heterosexual females, was replicated in the current work. However, none of the social comparison tendencies measured were found to predict the reward value of same-sex beauty. These results do not support the hypothesis that social comparison tendencies may, at least in part, explain the reward value of same-sex beauty among heterosexual women. However, due to the small sample size these results should be interpreted somewhat cautiously

    The influence of mental frames on the neurocognitive processing of visual art

    Get PDF

    The influence of mental frames on the neurocognitive processing of visual art

    Get PDF

    Bikinis instigate generalized impatience in intertemporal choice.

    Get PDF
    Neuroscientific studies demonstrate that erotic stimuli activate the reward circuitry processing monetary and drug rewards. Theoretically, a general reward system may give rise to non-specific effects: Exposure to 'hot stimuli' from one domain may thus affect decisions in a different domain. We show that exposure to sexy cues leads to more impatience in intertemporal choice between monetary rewards. Highlighting the role of a general reward circuitry, we demonstrate that individuals with a sensitive reward system are more susceptible to the effect of sex cues, that the effect generalizes to non-monetary rewards, and that satiation attenuates the effect.Choice; Decision; Decisions; Effects; Exposures; Studies;

    The effects of attractiveness and underlying components on the motivational salience and the memorability of face photographs

    Get PDF
    Facial attractiveness is a particularly salient social cue that influences many important social outcomes. Using a standard key-press task to measure motivational salience of faces and an old/new memory task to measure memory for face photographs, this thesis investigated both within-woman and between-women variations in response to facial attractiveness. The results indicated that within-woman variables, such as fluctuations in hormone levels, influenced the motivational salience of facial attractiveness. However, the between-women variable, romantic relationship status, did not appear to modulate women’s responses to facial attractiveness. In addition to attractiveness, dominance also contributed to both the motivational salience and memorability of faces. This latter result demonstrates that, although attractiveness is an important factor for the motivational salience of faces, other factors might also cause faces to hold motivational salience. In Chapter 2, I investigated the possible effects of women’s salivary hormone levels (estradiol, progesterone, testosterone, and estradiol-to-progesterone ratio) on the motivational salience of facial attractiveness. Physically attractive faces generally hold greater motivational salience, replicating results from previous studies. Importantly, however, the effect of attractiveness on the motivational salience of faces was greater in test sessions where women had high testosterone levels. Additionally, the motivational salience of attractive female faces was greater in test sessions where women had high estradiol-to-progesterone ratios. While results from Chapter 2 suggested that the motivational salience of faces was generally positively correlated with their physical attractiveness, Chapter 3 explored whether physical characteristics other than attractiveness contributed to the motivational salience of faces. To address this issue, I first had the faces rated on multiple traits. Principal component analysis of third-party ratings of faces for these traits revealed two orthogonal components that were highly correlated with trustworthiness and dominance ratings respectively. Both components were positively and independently related to the motivational salience of faces. While Chapter 2 and 3 did not examine the between-woman differences in response to facial attractiveness, Chapter 4 examined whether women’s responses to facial attractiveness differed as a function of their romantic partnership status. As several researchers have proposed that partnership status influences women’s perception of attractiveness, in Chapter 4 I compared the effects of men’s attractiveness on partnered and unpartnered women’s performance on two response measures: memory for face photographs and the motivational salience of faces. Consistent with previous research, women’s memory was poorer for face photographs of more attractive men and more attractive men’s faces held greater motivational salience. However, in neither study were the effects of attractiveness modulated by women’s partnership status or partnered women’s reported commitment to or happiness with their romantic relationship. A key result from Chapter 4 was that more attractive faces were harder to remember. Building on this result, Chapter 5 investigated the different characteristics that contributed to the memorability of face photographs. While some work emphasizes relationships with typicality, familiarity, and memorability ratings, more recent work suggests that ratings of social traits, such as attractiveness, intelligence, and responsibility, predict the memorability of face photographs independently of typicality, familiarity, and memorability ratings. However, what components underlie these traits remains unknown, as well as whether these components relate to the actual memorability of face photographs. Principal component analysis of all these face ratings produced three orthogonal components that were highly correlated with trustworthiness, dominance, and memorability ratings, respectively. Importantly, each of these components also predicted the actual memorability of face photographs

    Factors influencing the motivational salience of faces

    Get PDF
    My research utilizes a behavioral key-press task adapted from the classic bar-press technique employed in many rodent studies of reward to explore the incentive salience of beauty among humans. In Chapter 2, I replicate previous findings indicating that gender differences exist for the incentive salience of beauty. I extend past findings with regard to the incentive salience of heterosexual beauty by investigating the role of additional aspects of facial appearance. Here, I find that apparent health holds incentive salience. This may serve an adaptive function by driving motivation to seek out healthy potential mates while avoiding infectious individuals. In Chapter 3, I explore gender differences in the incentive salience of adult and infant faces. I show that women demonstrate greater motivation, overall, to view infant faces while both men and women differentiate between the high-cute and low-cute versions of infant faces, suggesting that infant cuteness may hold incentive salience for both men and women but that infants in general have higher incentive salience for women. In Chapters 4 and 5, I investigate individual differences and variation across the menstrual cycle for women viewing adult faces. Women's own attractiveness was found to influence motivation to view attractive individuals, especially same-sex individuals. Within-subject variations in motivation across the menstrual cycle were apparent for the incentive salience of same-sex beauty. Taken together, the results of these experiments suggest that the incentive salience of same-sex faces among women may be partially driven by intrasexual competition – a novel explanation for women’s motivation to view same-sex individuals. Overall my research has indicated that infant cuteness, adult attractiveness and apparent health influence the motivational value of faces, while individual differences also exist among women with respect to own attractiveness and fertility. The key-press paradigm offers an exciting new method for exploring inter- and intra-sexual behavior in humans

    The Effects of an Erotic Video on Exercise

    Get PDF
    This study investigated how an erotic video affects submaximal and maximal exercise in heterosexual college-aged men. [This is an excerpt from the abstract. For the complete abstract, please see the document.

    The Erogenous Mirror: Intersubjective and Multisensory Maps of Sexual Arousal in Men and Women

    Get PDF
    Erogenous zones of the body are sexually arousing when touched. Previous investigations of erogenous zones were restricted to the effects of touch on one's own body. However, sexual interactions do not just involve being touched, but also involve touching a partner and mutually looking at each other's bodies. We take a novel interpersonal approach to characterize the self-reported intensity and distribution of erogenous zones in two modalities: touch and vision. A large internet sample of 613 participants (407 women) completed a questionnaire, where they rated intensity of sexual arousal related to different body parts, both on one's own body and on an imagined partner's body in response to being touched but also being looked at. We report the presence of a multimodal erogenous mirror between sexual partners, as we observed clear correspondences in topographic distributions of self-reported arousal between individuals' own bodies and their preferences for a partner's body, as well as between those elicited by imagined touch and vision. The erogenous body is therefore organized and represented in an interpersonal and multisensory way

    Mapping social reward and punishment processing in the human brain:A voxel-based meta-analysis of neuroimaging findings using the social incentive delay task

    Get PDF
    Social rewards or punishments motivate human learning and behaviour, and alterations in the brain circuits involved in the processing of these stimuli have been linked with several neuropsychiatric disorders. However, questions still remain about the exact neural substrates implicated in social reward and punishment processing. Here, we conducted four Anisotropic Effect Size Signed Differential Mapping voxel-based meta-analyses of fMRI studies investigating the neural correlates of the anticipation and receipt of social rewards and punishments using the Social Incentive Delay task. We found that the anticipation of both social rewards and social punishment avoidance recruits a wide network of areas including the basal ganglia, the midbrain, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, the supplementary motor area, the anterior insula, the occipital gyrus and other frontal, temporal, parietal and cerebellar regions not captured in previous coordinate-based meta-analysis. We identified decreases in the BOLD signal during the anticipation of both social reward and punishment avoidance in regions of the default-mode network that were missed in individual studies likely due to a lack of power. Receipt of social rewards engaged a robust network of brain regions including the ventromedial frontal and orbitofrontal cortices, the anterior cingulate cortex, the amygdala, the hippocampus, the occipital cortex and the brainstem, but not the basal ganglia. Receipt of social punishments increased the BOLD signal in the orbitofrontal cortex, superior and inferior frontal gyri, lateral occipital cortex and the insula. In contrast to the receipt of social rewards, we also observed a decrease in the BOLD signal in the basal ganglia in response to the receipt of social punishments. Our results provide a better understanding of the brain circuitry involved in the processing of social rewards and punishment. Furthermore, they can inform hypotheses regarding brain areas where disruption in activity may be associated with dysfunctional social incentive processing during diseas

    Gender Differences in Human Single Neuron Responses to Male Emotional Faces

    Get PDF
    Well-documented differences in the psychology and behavior of men and women have spurred extensive exploration of gender€™s role within the brain, particularly regarding emotional processing. While neuroanatomical studies clearly show differences between the sexes, the functional effects of these differences are less understood. Neuroimaging studies have shown inconsistent locations and magnitudes of gender differences in brain hemodynamic responses to emotion. To better understand the neurophysiology of these gender differences, we analyzed recordings of single neuron activity in the human brain as subjects of both genders viewed emotional expressions. This study included recordings of single-neuron activity of 14 (6 male) epileptic patients in four brain areas: amygdala (236 neurons), hippocampus (n = 270), anterior cingulate cortex (n = 256), and ventromedial prefrontal cortex (n = 174). Neural activity was recorded while participants viewed a series of avatar male faces portraying positive, negative or neutral expressions. Significant gender differences were found in the left amygdala, where 23% (n = 15/66) of neurons in men were significantly affected by facial emotion, vs. 8% (n = 6/76) of neurons in women. A Fisher€™s exact test comparing the two ratios found a highly significant difference between the two (p \u3c 0.01). These results show specific differences between genders at the single-neuron level in the human amygdala. These differences may reflect gender-based distinctions in evolved capacities for emotional processing and also demonstrate the importance of including subject gender as an independent factor in future studies of emotional processing by single neurons in the human amygdala
    • …
    corecore