The effect of moral disgust on the level of desire and sexual arousal

Abstract

Aim of research. Our aim was to find out whether eliciting moral disgust influences sexual arousal and desire.

Methods. We conducted research on 171 participants, most of whom were university students. They were presented with a story eliciting moral disgust (experimental group) or a neutral story (control group), with photographs of the characters from the stories. Subsequently, the participants were asked to fill in the Sexual Arousal and Desire Scale, within which they had to remind themselves of their last sexual experiences. The scale consists of four sub-scales: evaluative, negative/aversive, physiological and motivational aspect.

Results. No significant differences were found in terms of the three positive sub-scales: evaluative, physiological and motivational aspects. It indicates that moral disgust does not influence the vividness of positive aspects of sexual arousal and desire. However, discrepancies in the negative/aversive aspect of the SADI scale were found – morally disgusted participants were noted to have statistically higher scores in this sub-scale than the controls. No gender differences were found in these relationships.

Limitations. The research was conducted on a group that was homogeneous with respect to age, education and the place of residence.

Conclusions. The results imply that moral disgust has an influence on accessibility of negative elements of last sexual experience’s memories, regardless of accessibility of positive elements of such memories. Earlier studies suggested that disgust makes moral judgments more severe, and this study widens this relationship – moral disgust increases judgments in general, including the negative parts of sexual experiences.