Elsevier

Physiology & Behavior

Volume 62, Issue 4, October 1997, Pages 909-912
Physiology & Behavior

Articles
Testosterone and Pupillary Response to Auditory Sexual Stimuli

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0031-9384(97)00268-0Get rights and content

Abstract

Low-, medium-, and high-testosterone subjects listened to four 30-s recorded stimuli while a computer system continuously measured their pupil size. The stimuli dealt with sex, aggression, and two neutral topics. Subjects dilated more to sex than to the other topics. Male and female subjects responded similarly, although low-testosterone males did not dilate as long as other subjects to the sexual stimulus. Auditory stimuli avoid a brightness artifact associated with visual stimuli. Auditory stimuli can be used in a variety of pupillometry studies, including studies of ongoing conversation and social interaction.

Section snippets

Overview

Subjects were 66 male and 58 female undergraduate students who participated as part of a course requirement. Each subject provided a saliva sample for testosterone assay, and we measured pupil size while the subject heard four tape-recorded stimuli, one sexual, one aggressive, one a neutral conversation, and one a neutral airline announcement.

Procedure

Subjects reported individually to a psychology laboratory, where an experimenter of their own sex met them. The experimenter described the procedure, and

Results

Fig. 1 shows mean pupil dilation across the four stimuli, based on the smoothed 0.5-s scores. Pupils dilated about 3% with the talk, airline, and fight stimuli and about 6% with the sexual stimulus.

After grouping scores into 5-s intervals and subjects into three testosterone levels, we used four-way analysis of variance to examine the between-subjects factors of sex and testosterone and within-subjects factors of stimulus and time. There were significant differences among stimuli, F(3, 306) =

Discussion

Subjects’ pupils dilated more to sex than to other topics, and testosterone entered into this effect. Dilation to the sexual stimulus was most brief among male subjects who were low in testosterone.

We expected marked dilation to the aggressive as well as the sexual stimulus, but this did not happen. Subjects may have reacted negatively to the acrimonious argument between boyfriend and girlfriend in the aggressive stimulus, or aggression may be simply less arousing than we thought. A more

Acknowledgements

This research was supported in part by National Science Foundation Grant SBR-9511600 and a Chancellor’s Initiative grant from Georgia State University. Data were collected by Darren Aboyoun and Rebecca Strong.

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