Voluntary control of eroticism

Abstract

A recent study reported that motivated human male subjects were able voluntarily to inhibit penile erection in the presence of effective erotic stimulation (Laws and Rubin, 1969). However, because this study required attendance only to the display area of erotic stimuli, there was a possibility that inhibition resulted from their subjects not attending to the content of the stimuli. The present study utilized a procedure that guaranteed subjects' attendance to the content of the erotic stimulation, i.e., a description of the behavioral content of the erotic stimulus film. Nevertheless, every subject was able to inhibit penile erection almost as effectively as when no film description was required. Furthermore, the verbal description prevented the production of competing asexual stimuli; a technique that all subjects, in both the Laws and Rubin study (1969) and the present study, reported using to inhibit penile erection when no description was required. This suggests that although concentration on asexual stimuli may be the preferred method of reducing sexual arousal to erotic stimulation, penile erection can be inhibited by other methods.