Sexual Material Perception in Sexually Coercive Men: Disattending Deficit and Its Covariates

Abstract

The perceptual bias for sexual material has been explored mainly in normal men, and to date little attention has been paid to sexually aggressive men. The current study compared performance of sexually aggressive and nonaggressive men on experimental tasks involving sexual stimuli. Participants viewed the visual images (neutral or sexual), and, depending on the cue they were presented, they either responded to shape and color questions or just skipped to the next trial. In contrast with noncoercive men, men who admitted sexually coercive behavior showed increased response latencies only in the condition in which they were required to withdraw their attention from sexual stimuli to perform the cognitive task. Correlations with attentional performance suggested that sexually coercive men high on impulsivity and aggressiveness might experience cognitive interference when processing sexual material. These results are interpreted using disinhibition and response modulation models.