Affective and physiological sexual response patterns: the effects of instructions on sexually functional and dysfunctional men

Abstract

To more clearly characterize the patterns of cognitive-affective and physiological responses concomitant with male sexual dysfunction, the present study compared 14 sexually dysfunctional and 16 sexually functional men. All individuals listened to two sexually explicit tapes and engaged in a self-generated fantasy, while genital, heart rate and scaled cognitive affective responses were recorded. Two types of instructions, a performance demand set and a non-demand sensate focus set, preceded the erotic tapes in counterbalanced order. As predicted, dysfunctional men showed less genital tumescence to tapes preceded by the demand than the non-demand instructions. Contrary to expectation, functional men showed greater penile tumescence to the tapes preceded by demand instructions. Self-reported sexual arousal did not follow the penile tumescence pattern but instead indicated that the dysfunctional sample was significantly less subjectively aroused to the tapes and fantasy. There were other significant differences between the groups. Dysfunctional men showed greater general psychological distress, as measured by the SCL-90, including elevated somaticism, anxiety and depression scores. During the experimental session, dysfunctional men also evidenced greater awareness of a variety of physiological responses, as well as more negative and fewer positive cognitive-affective states. These data are discussed in terms of the interaction of affective and physiological responses, differences in contextual meanings of instructional sets given the presence of a dysfunction, and theoretical and clinical conceptualizations of male sexual functioning.