SOME EVIDENCE FOR HEIGHTENED SEXUAL ATTRACTION UNDER CONTIONS OF
HIGH ANXIETY – Donald G. Dutton and Arthur P. Aron
Hypothesis: This research is to test the notion that an attractive female is seen as more
attractive by males who encounter her while they experience a strong emotion (fear) than by
males not experiencing a strong emotion.
Experiment 1 is an attempt to verify this proposed emotion-sexual attraction link in a natural
setting. Experiments 2 & 3 are field and laboratory studies which attempt to clarify the results
of Experiment 1.
Experiment 1
Subjects: 85 males between 18 and 35 years old unaccompanied by a female companion.
Conditions: The “Experimental” Bridge (high, un-steady, low handrails), with interviewer
Gloria, and the “Control” Bridge, with interviewer Donna.
Procedure: When the subjects crossed the experimental or control bridge a female or male
interviewer approached them. Asked them to fill out a short questionnaire with six filler items
and on the back the TAT test (this particular picture was chosen for the lack of obvious
sexual content). Afterword’s the experimenter thanked them and gave them her number if
they wanted further explaining about the experiment.
Results:
- Arousal manipulation: It was observed how the subjects walked and they filled out a
question on the questionnaire asking; “How fearful were you while crossing the
bridge?”. It could be concluded that most people are quite anxious on the
experimental bridge and not on the control bridge.
- Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): For the female interviewer, the TAT scores on the
experimental bridge were more sexually tinted that the stories on the control bridge
This was not reproduced with the male interviewer.
- Behavioral data: The subjects that got the number of the female interviewer on the
experimental bridge called more often than the subjects on the control bridge and
thus the experimental subjects were more attracted to the interviewer. These results
were again not replicated with the male interviewer.
Experiment 2
This second experiment was conducted to try to rule out any differential subject population.
Subjects: 34 males visiting the “Experimental” bridge.
Procedure: This study was the same as study 1 but with a few alterations. There was no
male interviewer used anymore. And the control condition in this study were the people that
walked over the experimental bridge 10-min ago. This was to rule out physical arousal but
get the same sort of population.
Results:
- Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Again, in the experimental group the stories in the
questionnaire were a lot more sexually tinted than those in the control group.
- Behavioral Data: Also in this situation, the subjects in the experimental condition
called the interviewer back more often than those in the control condition.
Experiment 3
The third experiment was conducted to see whether the “lady in distress” problem, that was
thought in the previous experiments in the experimental condition, was an actual problem.
Subjects: 80 male student volunteers plus one female confederate (part of experiment).
Procedure: This was a 2x2 factorial design where the male students expected either a
painful or non-painful shock and the female confederate also expected either a painful or
non-painful shock (lady in distress). They had the subject come in with the experimenter,
then the experimenter went to go look for the other ‘participant’. The experiment was
, explained to them, especially the use of the shock. The low shock would be a mere tingle
and the severe shock would be quite painful. The male and female had to flip a coin to see
who got the low and who the severe shock. They were told they would get a questionnaire
concerning their feelings at that moment, then they were led into individual cubicles to fill out
the questionnaire and were then debriefed without getting the actual shock.
Results: The dependent measure was the questionnaire that was divided in three parts. Part
1 was for the anxiety check, part 2 for the attraction towards the co-subject and part 3 was
again a TAT picture for sexual imagery.
- Anxiety: In the condition where the participants would receive a strong shock they
were rate more anxious than in when they would receive the low shock. There were
no significant differences found when the co-subject would receive the strong shock
vs the weak shock.
- Attraction to confederate: Subject’s expectations of strong versus weak shock to the
female confederate produced no significant increase in attraction.
- TAT: The sexual imagination for subjects who were told to receive the strong shock
was higher than for those who were told to receive the weak shock.
COGNITIVE CONSEQUENCES OF FORCED COMPLIANCE – Leon Festinger and James
M. Carlsmith
Festinger proposed a theory concerning cognitive dissonance from which come a number of
derivations about opinion change following forced compliance. Earlier research found that a
large reward produced less subsequent opinion change than did a smaller reward.
Hypothesis: The larger the reward given to the subject, the smaller will be the subsequent
opinion change.
Participants: 71 male students from an introductory psychology course at NYU. There were
11 non-usable results so in the end 60 participant results were used.
Procedure
The experiment was listed as a two-hour experiment dealing with “Measures of
Performance”. It was mentioned in class beforehand as well. When S (participant) arrived, he
did an hour of boring and dull tasks, E (experimenter) made a number of notes during to
make it seem very interesting. After this was done E told that normally they had another
student tell the following participants that is was a fun and very interesting task because
through this they created two groups. One that went into the experiment unknowing and the
other going in knowing a bit more. This was the ‘true purpose of the experiment’, or at least
this was what S was told.
So far everything was the same for all conditions. But now there were three situations. The
Control condition, the One-dollar condition and the Twenty-dollar condition.
In the Control condition, S was told to wait for the interviewer to finish up the experiment and
have an interview.
In the One-dollar and Twenty-dollar condition S was asked if he could maybe take the place
of the person who normally talks to the next participant since the student who normally does
this did not show up. And if E could maybe hire S in the future as well if this were to happen
again. S would be paid or one dollar or twenty dollars for this. After hesitation almost all said
yes and received a paper with a text of what he had to say on it. E took S to the secretary’s
office where the new participant (a girl who was part of the experiment) was already sitting.
They slowly had a conversation about the experiment and S told how he experienced it,
which was all recorded on a hidden tape recorder. Then E came to get S for the same
interview the Control condition had.
The interviewer, who had no clue which S belonged to which condition, asked S to rate his
opinion or reaction on an 11-point scale and then gave him a number of
statements/questions.
Then the true purpose of the experiment was told and the money was taken back.
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