Identification with Stimuli Moderates Women's Affective and Testosterone Responses to Self-Chosen Erotica

Sexual thoughts are sufficient to increase testosterone (T) in women, yet erotic films are not. A key confound in past studies is autonomy in stimulus selection: women choose the content of their sexual thoughts but films have been selected by researchers. We hypothesized that self-chosen erotic films, compared to researcher-chosen erotic films, would (1) increase women's self-reported arousal, enjoyment, and identification with stimuli, and decrease negative affect; and (2) increase T. 

Participants (N = 116 women) were randomly assigned to a neutral documentary condition or one of three erotic film conditions: high choice (self-chosen erotica from participants' own sources), moderate choice (self-chosen erotica from films preselected by sexuality researchers), or no choice (researcher-chosen erotica). Participants provided saliva samples for T before and after viewing the film in the privacy of their homes. 

Compared to researcher-chosen erotica, self-chosen erotica increased self-reported arousal and enjoyment, but also unexpectedly disgust, guilt, and embarrassment. Self-chosen erotica only marginally increased identification with stimuli compared to researcher-chosen erotica. Overall, film condition did not affect T, but individual differences in identification moderated T responses: among women reporting lower levels of identification, the moderate choice condition decreased T compared to the no choice condition, but this difference was not observed among women with higher identification. 

These results highlight the importance of cognitive/emotional factors like identification for sexually modulated T. However, self-chosen erotica results in more ambivalent rather than unequivocally positive cognitive/emotional responses, perhaps because stigma associated with viewing erotica for women becomes more salient when choosing stimuli.

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By:  Goldey KL1, van Anders SM2.

• 1Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA.
• 2Departments of Psychology and Women's Studies; Programs in Neuroscience and Reproductive Sciences; Science, Technology, and Society Program; Biosocial Methods Collaborative, University of Michigan, 530 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA. smva@umich.edu.

 

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Compassion or Stigma? How Adults Bereaved by Alcohol or Drugs Experience Services

How to promote compassionate care within public services is a concern in several countries; specifically, some British healthcare scandals highlight poor care for service users who may readily be stigmatised as 'other'. The article therefore aims to understand better the relationship between stigma and compassion. 

As people bereaved by a drug- or alcohol-related death often experience stigma, the article draws on findings from a major British study, conducted during 2012-2015 by the authors, of people bereaved in this way, in order to see how service provision can be improved. One hundred and six bereaved family members were interviewed in depth about their experiences of loss and support. Thematic analysis developed theoretical understandings of participants' lived experiences. This article analyses our data on how bereaved people experienced stigma and kindness from practitioners of all kinds. 

We found that stigma can be mitigated by small acts of kindness from those encountered after the death. Stigma entails stereotyping, othering and disgust, each of which has emotional and cognitive aspects; kindness entails identification and fellow feeling; professionalism has classically entailed emotional detachment, but interviewees found cold professionalism as disturbing as explicit disgust. 

Drawing on theories concerning the end of life, bereavement and emotional labour, the article analyses the relationship between stigma, kindness and professionalism, and identifies some strategies to counter stigmatisation and foster compassion.

Via:  http://ht.ly/SXFIS Full article at: http://ht.ly/SXFQC

By: Walter T1, Ford A2, Templeton L1, Valentine C1, Velleman R3.

• 1Centre for Death & Society, Social & Policy Sciences, University of Bath, Bath, UK.
• 2Institute for Social Marketing, University of Stirling, Stirling, UK.
• 3Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, UK.

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