An Examination of Psychophysiological Sexual Arousal in Bisexual Women

This study aims to gain an understanding of the sexual arousal patterns of women who have some degree of sexual attraction to both males and females. Women’s genital arousal has been found to be nonspecific. That is, women have been found to show physiological arousal to stimuli depicting both their preferred and non-preferred gender (Chivers, Seto, & Blanchard, 2007). This previous research has examined arousal patterns of heterosexual and homosexual females but no research to date has focused on bisexual women. Bisexuality has been found to be more prevalent in women than homosexuality (Mosher, Chandra, & Jones, 2005); therefore, it is important to understand the arousal patterns of these women. In the current study, women’s physiological and self-reported arousal will be measured as they view erotic videos varying by degree of sexual activity (e.g., naked exercising, masturbation, coupled intercourse) and varying by gender of the sexual actors. Based on past literature, I expect to find that both physiological and subjective arousal levels will increase as the level of sexual activity in the videos increases (e.g. greater arousal to intercourse than to masturbation). I also expect to find that the correlation between bisexual women’s physiological and subjective arousal will be stronger than the concordance for either heterosexual or homosexual women. Finally, I expect frequency of masturbation, use of erotica, and sex toy use to be positively correlated with women's sexual arousal concordance (between physiological and subjective arousal).