Citation

Shafir R, Zucker L, Sheppes G. Biol. Psychol. 2018; 137: 116-124.

Affiliation

The School of Psychological Sciences, and Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel. Electronic address: sheppes@post.tau.ac.il.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2018, Elsevier Publishing)

DOI

10.1016/j.biopsycho.2018.07.007

PMID

30030166

Abstract

Despite the frequent need to down-regulate sexual desire, existing studies are scarce, and focus on strategies that involve disengagement from processing sexual stimuli. Accordingly, the present study compared the efficacy of down-regulating sexual desire via disengagement (attentional distraction) and engagement (situation-focused reappraisal) strategies. Utilizing Event Related Potentials, we measured the Late Positive Potential (LPP) - an electro-cortical component that denotes processing of arousing stimuli, showing decreased amplitudes during successful down-regulation. Additionally, we explored whether the sexual-intensity level of stimuli (validated in a pilot study) impacts the efficacy of, and individuals' behavioral preferences for distraction and situation-focused reappraisal. Supporting our predictions, relative to passive watching, both strategies successfully attenuated self-reported desire and LPP amplitudes, with a marginal trend (p = .07) showing stronger LPP attenuation during distraction compared to reappraisal. While sexual-intensity did not moderate regulatory efficacy, as predicted, disengagement-distraction preference increased for sexually-intense relative to sexually-mild stimuli. Broad implications are discussed.

Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Language: en

Keywords

Distraction; Emotion Regulation; Late Positive Potential; Reappraisal; Sexual Desire