Investigating the effects of sexual arousalon increasing pain tolerance

Altehoefer, Nik (2022) Investigating the effects of sexual arousalon increasing pain tolerance. Master thesis, Psychology.

	Text The Effect of Sexual Arousal and Disgust of Pain Sensation in Females N.J.Altehoefer.pdf Restricted to Repository staff only Download (473kB)
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Abstract

Sexual arousal has been shown to have analgesic effects (pain decreasing) and disgust has been shown to create hyperalgesia (pain increase) however, most studies have not focused on the effects of non-direct sexual arousal and disgust on pain sensation in females. Based on a study by Lakhsassi et al. (2022), our study looks into the effects that sexual arousal and disgust have on pain tolerance and pain intensity. We use 6-minute video clips to induce sexual arousal, disgust and a baseline condition as well as a cold pressor, to assess pain, on females, 18 and above. We hypothesize that sexual arousal will significantly increase pain tolerance (H1) and decrease pain intensity (H2), in comparison to the disgust and baseline conditions. We also hypothesize that disgust will significantly decrease pain tolerance (H3) and increase pain intensity (H4), in comparison to the sexual arousal and baseline condition. Using a between-groups experimental design, we randomly sampled participants from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen as well as the city of Groningen, Netherlands to reach a sample size of N=174 female participants. We found non-significant results for all of our hypotheses. Despite our findings, our study may show that certain factors must be met in order to observe analgesia/hyperalgesia through the induction of sexual arousal/disgust. A high level of arousal, a longer priming time (~30-45 mins.), piloting videos to see whether they induce other emotions/feelings and, for sexual arousal, direct stimulation/orgasm.

Item Type:	Thesis (Master)
Supervisor name:	Borg, C. and Lakhsassi, L.
Degree programme:	Psychology
Differentiation route:	Clinical Psychology (CP) [Master Psychology]
Date Deposited:	01 Sep 2022 12:30
Last Modified:	01 Sep 2022 12:30
URI:	http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/1412

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