Alcohol expectancies and sexuality

Alcohol Health & Research World,  Spring, 1991  by Mark S. Goldman,  Laurie Roehrich

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Prompted by these initial findings that expectancies might be partly responsible for the apparent paradox in which humans use alcohol for its aphrodisiac properties despite its impairment of sexual functioning, researchers went on to investigate the influence of expectancy on various dimensions of alcohol use and sexuality. Using variations of the basic balanced-placebo design, investigators studied the different responses of subjects who had more or less guilt about sexuality and studied the relationships between alcohol use and sexual expression when stimuli varied in degree of eroticism (including deviant acts), when subjects were exposed to hetero- or homoeroticism, and concomitants of eroticism.

Despite differences among the studies, a characteristic pattern emerged. Researchers routinely observed increases in both subjective and physical indices of arousal in males (Briddell and Wilson 1976), and these effects became exaggerated when participants revealed guilty feelings about sexual expression (Lang et al. 1980) and when the sexual material to which they were exposed was socially unacceptable (Lansky and Wilson 1981). George and co-workers (1988) found that subjects who anticipated seeing films that were both highly erotic and deviant drank more wine than did subjects who anticipated seeing less erotic or neutral films. And in a study in which subjects' expectancies about effects of alcohol on sexuality were measured before a balanced-placebo manipulation was administered, the expectancies were found to predict the subjects' sexual responses under the alcohol-placebo conditions (George et al. 1989).

Only a few studies have investigated sexual reactivity in females. However, some of those studies have found a more striking gap between physiological sexual response and subjective response. Unlike males, females show no signs of physical arousal when they are led to believe alcohol is consumed. Nevertheless, females have demonstrated increases in subjective arousal in response to increases in consumption of alcohol (Malatesta et al. 1982)--even as alcohol decreases physical response (Wilson and Lawson 1978).

Results of studies of both males and females have been remarkably consistent (allowing for gender-related differences in physiological effects at low alcohol doses). Yet caution must be maintained. Questions have been raised about whether some balanced-placebo studies may have been compromised by subjects who were able to determine whether they were being administered alcohol despite efforts to disguise the contents of their drinks (Knight et al. 1986). Crowe and George (1989) point out that the generalizability of these studies may be limited by the extensive use of college undergraduates as subjects, the differences between individuals who do and do not volunteer for sex research (especially when physiological recording is used), and the absence of assessment of effects across the ascending and descending phases of the blood-alcohol curve. Furthermore, the physical response of genitals does not provide a full description of sexuality. It is possible, for example, that some people may perceive decreased levels of physical arousal as improved sexuality, as when males experience longer periods of erection before ejaculation, and when females prefer less intense physical stimulation. Such possibilities should not be overlooked as we examine psychologically based explanations.