Pupillary response as a measure of individuals' sexual interest in specific other individuals

瞳孔反应作为个体对特定其他个体的性兴趣的衡量标准

• 批准号: 2289818
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Kent
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2289818
• 关键词: Pupillary; response; measure; individuals; sexual

Increases in pupil size seem to indicate observers' sexual interest in other people. This pupillary response was first discovered in the 1960s, by filming observers' eyes whilst viewing sexually explicit material before manually measuring their pupil size in still video frames. Until recently, however, this effect remained largely unnoticed in the psychological literature, when the original findings were replicated with modern eye-tracking equipment. In the last few years, the study of this phenomenon has gathered pace, revealing that pupillary responses to sexually interesting images reflect observers' sexual orientation similarly to genital arousal, can discriminate the sex and age of a viewed person, are consistent across analysis protocols, and provide concurrent validity with latency-based (i.e. reaction time) measures of sexual interest. Pupillary responses appear to hold a key advantage over these latency-based methods, which are open to manipulation by participants. In contrast, pupillary response is linked to activation of the autonomic nervous system and is potentially impervious to conscious control. This makes pupillary response a valuable measure for unbiased assessment in the study of sexual cognition. In light of evidence that pupillary responses also predict observers' self-reported interest in child molestation, this indicates strong potential for applied settings (e.g., for treatment monitoring of paedophilic sexual offenders in forensic psychology).However, the conditions under which this response reliably measures sexual interest have been heavily debated and much evidence has been contradictory. For example, there is some evidence that this response is unaffected by the sexually explicitness of stimuli, while others have suggested that the relationship between pupillary responses and sexually non-explicit stimuli is complicated and at best modest. And whereas this effect is consistently observed in male observers (e.g., with pupil dilation in straight men during the viewing of women), it is typically absent in female observers. There is, however, limited evidence that it can be elicited in women with photographs of their romantic partners during ovulation, but not men generally, hinting at links to affect rather than sexual arousal. Resolving these issues is of clear importance to advance theory of pupillary responses and the study of sexual interest. We need to know whether these measures truly reflect sexual interest, or whether they are driven by affect for other people. Similarly, we need to establish whether these measures are sensitive to individuals' sexual interest in a specific other. Resolving these issues will speak to the differences that have been observed between men and women in pupillary response (i.e. with men's but not women's sexual interest consistently apparent from this measure), which are also evident in other measures of sexual interest that have been studied more widely, and will directly inform theory. In turn, this research has relevance for forensic practice, commercial where latency-based measures are already in use. If autonomic pupillary responses indeed reflect sexual interest, are robust at the level of the individual, and its differences across men and women are more fully understood, then this is likely to provide a much more appropriate measure for applied settings than those currently available. Moreover, since sexual offences against children are most frequently committed by family members, research that seeks to isolate the contributions of sexual and affective components in assessment is important. The aims of this research are therefore to determine whether pupillary response can robustly indicate sexual interest for individual observers; whether differences between men and women reflect general sexual interest in other people or interest in specific people; and whether pupillary responses reflect sexual interest or affect for other people.

瞳孔大小的增加似乎表明观察者对其他人的性兴趣。这种瞳孔反应最早是在 20 世纪 60 年代发现的，当时通过拍摄观察者在观看色情材料时的眼睛，然后在静态视频帧中手动测量他们的瞳孔大小。然而，直到最近，当原始发现被现代眼动追踪设备复制时，这种效应在心理学文献中基本上未被注意到。在过去几年中，对这一现象的研究加快了步伐，揭示了瞳孔对性兴趣图像的反应反映了观察者的性取向，类似于生殖器唤起，可以区分被观看者的性别和年龄，在不同的分析协议中保持一致，并提供基于潜伏期（即反应时间）的性兴趣测量的并发有效性。与这些基于延迟的方法相比，瞳孔反应似乎具有关键优势，这些方法可以被参与者操纵。相反，瞳孔反应与自主神经系统的激活有关，并且可能不受意识控制。这使得瞳孔反应成为性认知研究中公正评估的宝贵指标。有证据表明瞳孔反应也可以预测观察者自我报告的对儿童猥亵的兴趣，这表明应用环境具有巨大的潜力（例如，在法医心理学中对恋童癖性犯罪者的治疗监测）。然而，这种反应可靠地测量性兴趣的条件一直存在激烈争论，并且许多证据是相互矛盾的。例如，有一些证据表明，这种反应不受露骨性刺激的影响，而另一些证据表明，瞳孔反应与非露骨性刺激之间的关系是复杂的，而且充其量是适度的。尽管这种效应在男性观察者中始终观察到（例如，直男在观看女性时瞳孔扩张），但在女性观察者中通常不存在。然而，有限的证据表明，在排卵期间看到浪漫伴侣的照片的女性可以引发这种反应，但一般男性则不然，这暗示了这种反应与情感而非性唤起有关。解决这些问题对于推进瞳孔反应理论和性兴趣研究具有明显的重要性。我们需要知道这些措施是否真正反映了性兴趣，或者它们是否是受对其他人的影响所驱动。同样，我们需要确定这些措施是否对个人对特定他人的性兴趣敏感。解决这些问题将说明在瞳孔反应中观察到的男性和女性之间的差异（即，从这一测量中，男性的性兴趣始终明显，而女性的性兴趣不明显），这在其他已被更广泛研究的性兴趣测量中也很明显，并将直接为理论提供信息。反过来，这项研究与法医实践和商业相关，其中基于延迟的措施已经在使用。如果自主瞳孔反应确实反映了性兴趣，在个人层面上很强大，并且更充分地理解了男性和女性之间的差异，那么这可能会为应用环境提供比目前可用的更合适的测量方法。此外，由于对儿童的性犯罪最常由家庭成员实施，因此寻求在评估中分离出性和情感成分的贡献的研究非常重要。因此，本研究的目的是确定瞳孔反应是否可以有力地表明个体观察者的性兴趣；男性和女性之间的差异是否反映了对其他人的一般性兴趣或对特定人的兴趣；以及瞳孔反应是否反映性兴趣或对其他人的影响。