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Enhancement of Experienced Sexual Arousal in
Response to Erotic Stimuli Through
Misattribution of Unrelated Residual Excitation
ARTICLE in JOURNAL OF PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY · AUGUST 1975
Impact Factor: 5.08 · DOI: 10.1037/h0076784 · Source: PubMed CITATIONS
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Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1975 , Vol. 32 , No. 1 , 69-7 5 Enhancement of Experienced Sexual Arousal in Response to Erotic Stimuli Through Misattribution of Unrelated Residual Excitation Joanne R. Cantor, Dolf Zillmann, and Jennings Bryant Institute for Communication Research, Indiana University In a pretest, three phases of recovery from a standard physical exercise were determined. In Phase 1 , subjects experienced high levels of physiological excita- tion and recognized that their arousal was due to exercise. In Phase 2 , sub- jects maintained substantial excitatory residues from the exercise but felt that their arousal had returned to base level. In Phase 3 , subjects' excitatory re- sponses had decayed, and they knew they had recovered from the exercise. Subjects in the main experiment were exposed to an erotic film in the first, second, or third recovery phase after performing the exercise. Subjects viewing the film during the second recovery phase reported being more sexually aroused by the film and evaluated the film more positively than subjects in the other two conditions. Counter to the notion of arousal as a simple energizer of all behavior, these findings were interpreted as supporting excitation-transfer theory, which posits that residual excitation enhances emotional responses to unrelated, immediately present stimuli only when the prevailing arousal can- not be attributed to its actual source. Excitation-transfer theory (Zillmann, 1972 ) has been developed to account for an intensi- fication of emotional states which are pre- ceded by highly arousing, potentially unre- lated experiences. The theory involves the assumptions that (a) critical components of an excitatory response decay relatively slowly and often remain operative after the indi- vidual has adjusted cognitively to novel stimulation and (b) the individual character- istically does not distinguish between the portions of his excitation that are due to prior arousal and those that are caused by present stimulation. Since, according to the two-factor theory of emotion (Schachter, 1964), the intensity with which an emotion is felt is a function of the prevailing level of excitation, excitation-transfer theory posits that undecayed excitation from prior stimu- lation, in general, should produce an over- This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant GSOC-720547 1 to Dolf Zillmann. Joanne Cantor is now at the University of Wis- consin. Jennings Bryant is now at the University of Massachusetts. Requests for reprints should be sent to Dolf Zillmann, Institute for Communication Research, Radio-TV Center, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana 47401. intense response to present stimuli. Excita- tion transfer is not expected to occur in all situations in which undecayed excitation is present, however. In order for an enhance- ment of a subsequent emotion to be brought about, conditions must favor the misattribu- tion of residual arousal to stimuli which are immediately present. If it is obvious to the individual that the source of his arousal is his prior and not his present activity, trans- fer should not occur. Studies investigating aggressive behavior following exercise (Zillmann, Johnson, & Day, 1974 ; Zillmann, Katcher, & Milavsky, 1972 ) are relevant to this point. In these studies, angered subjects experiencing resid- ual excitation from exercise exhibited in- creased aggressiveness against their provoker when their opportunity to retaliate was pro- vided with some delay after exercise, but failed to do so when retaliation occurred im- mediately after exercise. It was speculated that transfer was prevented immediately after exercise because the individual's arousal state involved clear and readily distinguishable cues of the source of the arousal, such as heavy breathing and heart pounding. It was thought that during the time when such cues were present, the individual did not interpret
ENHANCEMENT OF EXPERIENCED SEXUAL AROUSAL 71 told the subject to start pedaling the bicycle. At the end of 1 minute, he told the subject to stop pedaling. During the next 10 minutes physiological measures were taken, and the subject was asked, at 1-minute intervals, to report on his arousal state. The series of slides the subject was exposed to throughout the exercise and decay periods consisted of magazine advertisements and pictures of scenery and wildlife. After the 10-minute assessment period, the subject was dismissed. Apparatus. A Schwinn bicycle ergometer was em- ployed for the exercise task. It was set for a work load of 1SOO kilopond meters per minute, or 245. 3 watts. Blood pressure was recorded on a Sears sphygmomanometergraph. Heart rate was assessed continuously on a Hewlett-Packard 77S4A recorder. The subject was prevented from receiving feed- back of his actual responses from the measuring equipment. Measures of actual excitation. Systolic blood pressure and heart rate were used as measures of sympathetic arousal. Blood pressure was measured before exercise and 1 , 3 , 5 , 7 , and 9 minutes after exercise. The continuous readings of heart rate auto- matically computed an average over IS beats. To achieve a correspondence of heart rate with the intermittent blood pressure readings, the mean recorded heart rate during the 20 seconds prior to each blood pressure assessment was used. Measure of perceived arousal. The subject was told to conceive of his arousal state in numerical terms, that is, to think of his physiological state before exercise as 0 % and his highest level of excita- tion, that experienced immediately after exercise, as 100 % of his excitatory response to exertion. He was instructed to report on his arousal level by stating the percentage of the arousal originally produced by the exercise that was still present. He was permitted to respond in negative percentages if he felt his arousal level to be lower than it was prior to exercise. Determination of time phases for the main experi- ment. The measures of actual physiological excita- tion, systolic blood pressure and heart rate, were coded along with the measures of perceived arousal taken 1 , 3 , S, 7 , and 9 minutes after exercise. To determine whether the perceived time of decay dif- fered significantly from the actual decay time for either physiological measure, the time of return to base level for each subject on each measure was recorded. For each physiological response, this was determined as the first minute during which the par- ticular response was at or below the level recorded prior to exercise. For the perceived arousal measure, it was recorded as the first minute during which the subject reported himself to be experiencing 0 % arousal. A Hotelling's T^2 analysis executed on these data yielded a highly significant overall difference between the three measures, T^2 = 82.09, cv = 3.5, F ( 3 , 1 2 ) , p<.00l. A Newman-Keuls test on the means of the three conditions revealed that the mean time of return to base level for perceived arousal (4.4 7 minutes) was significantly (p <" .001) less than
TABLE 1
MEANS or MEASURES or PERCEIVED AND ACTUAL RESIDUAL EXCITATION Measure Time of measurement Before exercise Minutes after exercise 1 S 9 Perceived residual excitation Actual residual excitation Systolic blood pressure Heart rate
84»b Note. For the ratings of perceived residual excitation, 0 corre- sponded to excitation experienced before exercise and 100 corre- sponded to excitation experienced immediately after exercise. Systolic blood pressure was measured in millimeters of mercury, heart rate in beats per minute. For each measure, means having no letter in their super- scripts in common differ significantly at p < .0 5 by Newman- Keuls test. the mean times of return to base level for systolic blood pressure (8.47) and heart rate (8.33). These results show that the physiological excitation produced by exercise lingered on for a substantial period of time after the subjects felt that they had returned to base level. Because arousal was perceived to be elevated, on the average, for somewhat less than 5 minutes, but actually remained elevated for over 8 minutes, Newman-Keuls analyses were performed on the measures taken 1 , 5 , and 9 minutes after exercise. As can be seen from Table 1 , subjects were signifi- cantly more aware of residual arousal 1 minute after exercise than 5 and 9 minutes after exercise. At these latter two times, mean assessments of arousal hov- ered around zero and did not differ appreciably from each other. Table 1 also shows that heart rate and blood pressure exhibited the required differentiations at these three times. One and S minutes after exercise, excitation was significantly elevated, and 9 minutes after, it was no longer significantly above base level. Although it was not possible to run analyses on physiological states immediately after exercise (the cardiotachometer required at least a half-minute to readjust), it was assumed that the differentiation would be even stronger if the condition of perceived residual arousal were shifted from 1 minute after to immediately after exercise. Main Experiment Subjects. Forty-five male undergraduates partici- pated in the experiment. They were recruited from the same class as the subjects in the pretest and fulfilled the same course requirement by participating. Subjects were randomly assigned to conditions. Design. Subjects were exposed to the same four segments of an erotic film (a) immediately after exercise (residual excitation perceived), (b) 5 minutes after exercise (residual excitation not perceived), or (c) 9 minutes after exercise (no residual excitation) and gave ratings of their own emotional responses to
72 J.^ CANTOR,^ D.^ ZILLMANN,^ AND^ J.^ BRYANT the film as well as their evaluations of the film. Ratings of a violent film seen prior to exercise served as a check on possible sampling bias. Procedure. Each subject was tested individually and received instructions on tape. The subject was told that two different experiments were being run in the same session for reasons of convenience. One experiment was said to deal with the subject's reac- tions to portions of feature films, and the other was said to deal with the effect of physical distraction on perception. The subject was told that in the film experiment, he would see several segments of two commercially distributed films, one violent and one erotic, and that after each segment, he would make two ratings, one dealing with the film segment per se and one reporting on his own response to the segment. The specific rating scales to be used and the manner of marking them were then explained. In addition, the subject was told that he would give summary evaluations of each film after all seg- ments of that film had been seen. At this point, he was told that the erotic film had an "R" rating, and he was given the opportunity to withdraw from the experiment if he did not wish to see such a film. (No subject withdrew.) Next, the subject was told that in the distraction experiment, he would be ex- posed to slides while seated on an exercise bicycle and that during 1 minute of the slide-viewing period, he would be asked to pedal the bicycle. Finally', it was explained that the distraction experiment would be run in the middle of the session to give the subject a break between the two films. The subject was seated in front of the television monitor and next to 'the bike exerciser and was given a booklet containing the evaluation forms. The ex- perimenter then started the videotape of the four segments of the violent film. As each segment ended, the subject gave it two ratings. The rating scales for the individual segments appeared on the first page of the booklet. After all four segments had been screened and rated, the experimenter told the subject to turn to the next page and fill out the summary evaluations of the film. Ratings of this film served mainly to familiarize subjects with the rating procedures, but additionally, the data from these ratings served as a check for sampling bias and as covariates for the ratings of the erotic film. Next, the subject was told to be seated on the bike exerciser, and the experimenter started the slide projector, which was loaded with 'the slides used in the pretest and set to change slides at the same intervals. All subjects spent 10 minutes sitting on the bike and viewing slides. The experimental manipula- tions were introduced by varying -the time at which the subject performed the 1-minute exercise. Sub- jects in the condition of perceived residual excitation performed the exercise during the last minute of slide-viewing, those in the condition of unperceived residual excitation performed it during the fourth minute, and those in the condition of no residual excitation exercised during the first minute. At the end of the 10 minutes, the slide projector was turned off, the subject returned to his seat, and the four segments of the erotic film were shown. The subject rated the film segments following the same procedure he had used to rate the violent film. He was then dismissed. The entire class was debriefed after all the data had been collected. Materials. The segments of the violent film were from The Wild Bunch. The erotic sequences were taken from Naked -under Leather. Each segment lasted 1 minute, and a 15-second pause was recorded between segments. Dependent measures. All film ratings were made on scales ranging from 0 to 100. The scales were numbered at intervals of 10 , but subjects were free to intersect the scale at any point. Ratings were recorded to the nearest integer. For each segment of both the violent film and the erotic film, subjects answered the question, "How exciting is this segment of the film?" by marking a scale ranging from "not at all exciting" to "extremely exciting." For each segment of the violent film, the second question read "How physically aroused were you by this segment of the film?" and was answered by marking a scale ranging from "not aroused at all" to "extremely aroused." For each segment of the erotic film, the second question read "How sexually aroused were you by this segment of the film?" and was an- swered by marking a scale ranging from "not sexu- ally aroused at all" to "extremely sexually aroused." The summary evaluations of both films involved an assessment of the aesthetic quality of each film, on a scale ranging from "very poor" to "excellent," an assessment of how entertaining each film was, on a scale ranging from "not at all enjoyable" to "ex- tremely enjoyable," and an assessment of how emo- tionally involving each film was, on a scale ranging from "not at all emotionally involving" to "extremely emotionally involving."
RESULTS
Reported Sexual Arousal in Response to
Erotic Film
An analysis of variance was executed on the
self-ratings of sexual arousal in response to
the four segments of the erotic film, with the
three conditions of residual excitation as an
independent measure factor and the four film
segments as a repeated measure factor. The
analysis yielded a highly significant main ef-
fect of residual excitation, F ( 2 , 4 2 ) =9.47,
p < .001. As can be seen from the "Segments
combined" column of Table 2 , this effect was
due to the fact that subjects in the condition
of unperceived residual excitation gave sig-
nificantly higher ratings of their own sexual
arousal than subjects in the other two condi-
tions. Thus, as expected, excitation transfer
occurred only in Phase 2. The analysis of
variance also yielded a significant main effect
74 J.^ CANTOR,^ D.^ ZILLMANN,^ AND^ J.^ BRYANT tions. The highest F ratio associated with the treatment conditions was 1.7 2 ( d f = 2 , 4 2 , p > .10) for ratings of the film's excitingness. All other F ratios were less than unity. There- fore, the differences observed in responses to the erotic film cannot have been due to a failure of random assignment. As a further check on the possibility of missampling, analyses of covariance were performed on the combined ratings of the film segments and the summary evaluations, using the analogous ratings of the violent film as covariates. All statistical decisions were identical to those yielded by the analyses of variance, with all significant F ratios becoming slightly more pronounced. DISCUSSION The findings of the present study bring strong and consistent support for the notion that residual excitation from prior activities enhances subsequent emotional experiences only when this excitation is not clearly linked to its actual source. The high levels of excita- tion experienced immediately after exercise did not cause an enhancement of responses to the erotic film on any measure. In contrast, the substantially lower excitatory residues existing 5 minutes after exercise markedly en- hanced responses to the erotic film on every measure. Subjects experiencing unrecognized residual excitation not only reported their own sexual arousal to be more intense, but also judged the film to be of A higher quality. Although the secondary expectation that the presence of properly attributed residual arousal would impair responses to the erotic film was not confirmed, there was some evidence of a tendency in this direction. Regarding the assessment of awareness of physiological arousal in the pretest, it might be argued that subjects reported perceiving that they had returned to base level sooner than they actually felt they had recovered because they experienced "evaluation appre- hension" and wanted to appear to be in good physical condition. This argument does not seem very convincing, however, in light of the fact that subjects knew that their actual physiological responses were being monitored. If anything, evaluation apprehension prob- ably caused subjects to try to be as accurate as possible and made them much more sensi- tive to their arousal state than they would have been under ordinary conditions. Thus, because artificially high levels of attention to interoceptive cues were fostered by the proce- dure, the observed duration of the period of awareness of residual arousal seems conserva- tive. Under more natural conditions, in which the individual would not be motivated to at- tend to interoceptive cues and, additionally, would be distracted by environmental stimuli, subjects would undoubtedly have felt that they had recovered sooner. Be this as it may, the problem of enhancing awareness cannot be solved, since there seems to be no way of probing awareness without enhancing it to some degree. The implications of the un- avoidable enhancement of awareness, in the framework of the present investigation, seem to be simply that the period during which apparent cues of arousal will prevent transfer is probably of shorter duration than the time reported in the pretest would suggest. This, of course, would mean that the phase in which transfer effects could occur is potentially longer. It might also be argued that the failure of excitation transfer immediately after exer- cise was due not to a failure of misattribution but rather to a distracting effect caused by the presence of strong interoceptive cues of arousal. Thus distracted, subjects may have paid little attention to the erotic film. How- ever, whereas heavy breathing and heart pounding might have momentarily preoccu- pied the subject, it seems that the extremely high attention-getting capacity of the type of stimuli used would quickly override any such distraction effects. The reported findings are clearly contrary to the expectation that residual arousal en- hances all ongoing behavior simply as a func- tion of the magnitude of prevailing arousal. They show that residual arousal which is properly recognized as such not only does not intensify ongoing responses, but may actually impair them. The findings demonstrate the crucial role of the misattribution of arousal in the enhancement of emotional responses by residual excitation.
ENHANCEMENT OF EXPERIENCED SEXUAL AROUSAL 75
REFERENCES
Girodo, M. Film-induced arousal, information search, and the attribution process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1973 , 25 , 357 -
Schachter, S. The interaction of cognitive and phys- iological determinants of emotional state. In P. H. Leiderman & D. Shapiro (Eds.), Psychobiological approaches to social behavior. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1964. Zillmann, D. The role of excitation in aggressive behavior. Proceedings of the Seventeenth Inter- national Congress of Applied Psychology, 1971. Brussels: Editest, 1972. Zillmann, D., Johnson, R. C., & Day, K. D. Attribu- tion of apparent arousal and proficiency of recov- ery from sympathetic activation affecting excita- tion transfer to aggressive behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1974 , 10 , 503-515. Zillmann, D., Katcher, A. H., & Milavsky, B. Excita- tion transfer from physical exercise to subsequent aggressive behavior. Journal of Experimental So- cial Psychology, 1972 , 8 , 247-259. (Received March 4 , 1974 )
