Die Auswirkungen von Erregung auf unser Denken

Eine interessante Studie untersucht, wie sich bestimmte Einstellungen unter der Wirkung sexueller Erregung verändern:

Despite the social importance of decisions taken in the ‘‘heat of the moment,’’ very little research has examined the effect of sexual arousal on judgment and decision making. Here we examine the effect of sexual arousal, induced by selfstimulation, on judgments and hypothetical decisions made by male college students. Students were assigned to be in either a state of sexual arousal or a neutral state and were asked to: (1) indicate how appealing they find a wide range of sexual stimuli and activities, (2) report their willingness to engage in morally questionable behavior in order to obtain sexual gratification, and (3) describe their willingness to engage in unsafe sex when sexually aroused. The results show that sexual arousal had a strong impact on all three areas of judgment and decision making, demonstrating the importance of situational forces on preferences, as well as subjects’ inability to predict these influences on their own behavior.

Quelle:  The heat of the moment: the effect of sexual arousal on sexual decision making (Abstract / Teilweiser Volltext/Volltext)

Viele werden jetzt sagen, dass das ja nun eigentlich ein Effekt ist, für den man nicht wirklich eine Studie braucht: Natürlich Verhalten wir uns anders, wenn wir erregt sind. Aber was ist Erregung eigentlich? Es ist in gewisser Weise die Aktivierung eines gewissen Programms durch zB die Stimulierung bestimmter Körperregionen. Es ist insofern etwas, was uns auf Sex vorbereitet und dessen Durchführung in gewisser Weise attraktiver macht. Es verändert also bestimmte Parameter in Richtung Sex und verleiht diesen eine stärkere Bedeutung. Nur: Wie genau soll man sich dies abseits einer Wirksamkeit innerhalb unserer Biologie, abseits einer Veränderung bestimmter Parameter, die unser Denken beeinflussen, erklären? Wir denken nicht logischer, im Gegenteil, häufig machen wir erhebliche Dummheiten unter der Wirkung sexueller Erregung.

Das zeigt auch die Studie in den Ergebnissen:

Sexuelle Erregung Denken

Unter dem Einfluss der „Erregung“ erscheint uns also sexuelles Sexueller und sexuelle Handlungen erscheinen uns attraktiver. Wir können uns in dem Moment beispielsweise wesentlich eher vorstellen, dass wir Sex mit jemanden haben, den wir hassen und Männer würden eher einen „Teufels“-Dreier, also 2 Männer und eine Frau mitmachen. Analsex scheint plötzlich wesentlich attraktiver und diverse andere Praktiken ebenfalls. Es erscheint auch frustrierender einfach nur rumzuknutschen und nicht weiterzukommen. 

Wie sich die Einstellung verändert zeigt auch die Beantwortung weiterer Fragen:

 

Sexuelle Erregung Denken2

Wie man sieht wird es hier wesentlich bösartiger gegenüber der Nichterregung. Was auch ein interessantes Licht auf die Frage wirft „Geht es bei der Vergewaltigung um Macht oder um Sex?“. Wie man an der Steigerung im Zusammenhang mit der Erregung sieht ist diese ein sehr wesentlicher Faktor.

Auch ein anderer interessanter Aspekt der Studie: Wie steht es um Verhütung

Sexuelle Erregung Verhütung

 

Es zeigt gut, warum das Predigen von Enthaltsamkeit als Vorbeugen gegen jugendliche Schwangerschaften wenig hilft: Solange sie im Klassenraum sitzen mag ihnen der Gedanke ganz logisch erscheinen. Wenn sie aber erregt sind, dann erscheint eben der Sex wesentlich attraktiver als vorher im Klassenraum und es kommt eher dazu, dass man die guten Vorsätze über Bord wirft. Dann wiederum wäre es besser, wenn die Jugendlichen ein Kondom zur Hand hätten, da sonst eher die Gefahr einer Schwangerschaft droht.

Aus der Studie:

This study examined the effect of high levels of sexual arousal on the subjective attractiveness of different activities, on self-reported willingness to take various morally dubious measures to procure sex, and on willingness to engage in risky sexual activities. Our results on attractiveness of activities suggest that sexual arousal acts as an amplifier of sorts. Activities that are not perceived as arousing when young males are not sexually aroused become sexually charged and attractive when they are, and those activities that are attractive even when not aroused, become more attractive under the influence of arousal. By showing that, when aroused, the same individual will find a much wider range of activities sexually appealing than when not aroused, these findings weigh in against the view of sexual preferences as being purely an individual difference variable—i.e., as dispositionally rather than situationally determined. Certainly, there are robust individual differences in sexual preferences and in the likelihood of engaging in various behaviors, but there also seem to be striking intra-individual differences caused, in our study, by externally caused variations in arousal level.
Our results further suggest that the change in attractiveness influences the intensity of motivation to have sex relative to other goals. Specifically, the increase in motivation to have sex produced by sexual arousal seems to decrease the relative importance of other considerations such as behaving ethically toward a potential sexual partner or protecting oneself against unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease. Like other drive-states (Loewenstein, 1996), and also somewhat analogous to the effects of alcohol (Ditto et al., 2005; Steele & Josephs, 1990), sexual arousal seems to narrow the focus of motivation, creating a kind of tunnel-vision where goals other than sexual fulfilment become eclipsed by the motivation to have sex (c.f., Blanton & Gerrard, 1997).
As noted in the introduction, a secondary implication of our findings is that people seem to have only limited insight into the impact of sexual arousal on their own judgments and behavior. Such an under-appreciation could be important for both individual and societal decision making. At the individual level, there is a considerable research showing that one’s meta-understanding of one’s own preferences can in many situations be almost as important as the preferences themselves. For example, as O’Donoghue and Rabin (2003) show, the impact of hyperbolic time discounting on actual intertemporal choice behavior depends critically on whether one is naı¨ve or sophisticated about the fact that one will face self-control problems in the future. Ariely and Wertenbroch (2002) likewise found, in a study of students taking a class, that those who were aware of their own tendency to procrastinate, and hence voluntarily set deadlines for themselves, got higher course grades than those who did not. Self-insight when it comes to sexual arousal and sexual behavior is similarly likely to be important for decision making. For example, the most effective means of self-control is probably not willpower (which has been shown to be of limited efficacy), but rather avoiding situations in which one will become aroused and lose control. Any failure to appreciate the impact of sexual arousal on one’s own behavior is likely to lead to inadequate measures to avoid such situations. Similarly, if people under-appreciate their own likelihood of having sex, they are likely to fail to take precautions to limit the potential damage from such encounters. A teenager who embraces ‘‘just say no,’’ for example, may feel it unnecessary to bring a condom on a date, thus greatly increasing  the likelihood of pregnancy or transmission of STDs if he/she ends up getting caught up in the heat of the moment.

The same logic applies interpersonally. If people judge others’ likely behavior based on observing them when they are not sexually aroused, and fail to appreciate the impact of sexual arousal, then they are likely to be caught by surprise by the other’s behavior when aroused. Such a pattern could easily contribute to daterape.

Indeed, it can create the perverse situation in which people who are the least attracted to their dates are most likely to experience date-rape because being unaroused themselves they completely fail to understand or predict the other (aroused) person’s behavior.
At a social level the failure to appreciate the influence of sexual arousal when one is unaroused can have diverse consequences. For example, judges and jurors, who are generally unaroused when making decisions of guilt and punishment, may be excessively condemnatory and punitive toward sexual offenders because they make their decisions in a sexually unaroused state and fail to appreciate how intense sexual arousal would alter even their own decision making in potentially compromising circumstances. The result is that decisions will be stigmatized as immoral misbehavior even by people who would themselves make the same choice when in an aroused state. It should be clear that such effects of arousal cannot justify any sexual exploitation, but they can make such behaviors somewhat more understandable. From the perspective of the legal system it is possible that sexual arousal should be given more credit as a partially mitigating factor than it would normally receive. Moreover, understanding these effects can help guide individuals (sex offenders for example) such that they will be less likely to sexually exploit or re-exploit. Finally, as alluded to in the discussion of individual decision making, the failure to appreciate sexual arousal by those who are not
themselves immediately aroused can also help to explain the enactment of misguided and ineffective policies such as ‘‘just say no’’, leaving young adults unprepared to limit the potential damage from their own behavior in the heat of the moment.

Wir können also nur sehr schwer einschätzen, wie wir reagieren, wenn wir nicht in unserem „normalen Modus“ sind, sondern erregt. Deswegen unterschätzen wir unser Verhalten und bewerten das Verhalten anderer härter.