Gender differences in the content of cognitive distraction during sex

Journal of Sex Research, Feb, 2006 by Marta Meana, Sarah E. Nunnink

Researchers investigating the cognitive processing of sexual stimuli have reported consistent gender differences (see Geer & Manguno-Mire, 1996, for a review) that may inform the differential role of distraction in the sexual arousal of men and women. For example, sexual content-induced delay (slower response in identifying stimuli when an erotic element is present) is longer in women. Men are also faster and more accurate in memory for sexual information and have a more complex organization of knowledge for sexually-oriented words, while women have a more complex organization of relationship-oriented words. The extent to which these differences relate to distraction is unknown. They might, however, suggest a gender difference in distractibility within the context of sexual situations. Women's hesitation in identifying erotic content, relative memory under-performance for sexual information, and less complex organization of explicit sexual information could all indicate a sexual focus more easily shifted than that of men.

Distraction and Sexual Arousal

Numerous studies on sexual arousal have focused on distraction, generally understood to denote attention to nonsexual thoughts. Most of these studies have tested male participants in laboratory settings. Distraction operationalizations have ranged from tones to mathematical tasks, and these have been pitted in the laboratory against a variety of erotic stimuli intended to produce sexual arousal (Abrahamson, Barlow, Sakheim, Beck, & Athanasiou, 1985; Adams, Haynes, & Brayer, 1985; Farkas, Sine, & Evans, 1979; Geer & Fuhr, 1976). Performance demands, specifically, have been targeted as potentially interfering with arousal. These have been operationalized as instructional sets to achieve erection as quickly as possible, continuous self-monitoring of arousal levels, and shock threats contingent on insufficient arousal (Abrahamson, Barlow, & Abrahamson, 1989; Beck & Barlow, 1986a, 1986b; Farkas et al., 1979; Heiman & Rowland, 1983; Lange, Wincze, Zwick, Feldman, & Hughes, 1981). Results indicate that cognitive distraction has an arousal-inhibiting effect for sexually functional men, although some specific performance demands actually enhance arousal. Cognitive distraction and performance demands do not seem, however, to have as great an effect on sexually dysfunctional men. The reason for this apparently paradoxical finding may lie in the possibility that the distraction introduced experimentally does not add significantly to the interference these men already experience (Abrahamson et al., 1985). Cranston-Cuebas and Barlow (1990) summarized this body of research as suggesting that sexual dysfunction in men is partly associated with attention that is focused on non-sexual thoughts.

The impact of distraction on the sexual arousal of women remains largely uninvestigated. A handful of laboratory studies using a combination of self-report and physiological measures of arousal indicated that distraction also interferes with their arousal, although a difference has yet to be found between sexually functional and dysfunctional women (Adams et al., 1985; Elliott & O'Donohue, 1997; Przybyla & Byrne, 1984). There is also a preliminary indication that women's arousal may be even more affected by distraction than that of men (Przybyla & Byrne).

Content of Cognitive Distraction

A few recent non-laboratory studies on female sexual arousal have focused on the content of cognitive distraction and on body image. Faith and Schare (1993) were able to predict frequency of sexual behavior in both male and female participants with body image scores from the Derogatis Sexual Functioning Inventory (DSFI: Derogatis, 1975). Women in this study, however, endorsed more negative body image than their male counterparts. The authors concluded that negative body image probably resulted in self-spectatoring during sex (a focus on self instead of the sexual activity or the partner) and, consequently, in sexual avoidance. Trapnell, Meston, and Gorzalka's (1997) replication of these findings led them to a different conclusion. They posited that the valence of the self-focus may determine whether it interferes with arousal. Self-focused women who liked their bodies probably did not experience the self-spectatoring as distracting, but rather, as arousing. The importance of the valence of sexual thoughts rather than their simple occurrence has been demonstrated repeatedly in the work of Byers and colleagues (Little & Byers, 2000; Renaud & Byers, 2001).

None of the aforementioned studies focused on the actual content of distracting thoughts during sexual activity. Dove and Wiederman (2000) were the first to attempt it. They designed and administered a cognitive distraction questionnaire to 74 women, inquiring about two potential distractors or concerns during sex: performance and bodily appearance. Finding no difference in scores between the two scales in their sample, they speculated that women may consider being attractive equivalent to performing well during sex. They thus combined scale scores to arrive at a general cognitive distraction score which was negatively associated with sexual esteem, sexual satisfaction, and orgasm consistency. Dove and Wiederman called for the further validation of this measure and the investigation of gender differences in appearance- versus performance-based distraction. Using a different instrument, the Body Image Self-Consciousness Scale, Wiederman (2000) found body self-consciousness to be negatively related to sexual experience and sexual assertiveness, and positively associated with sexual avoidance.