Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- One What is enigmatic about sexual desire?
- Two Explaining desire: multiple perspectives
- Three Sexual desire in a broad context
- Four An incentive-based model
- Five Sex and levels of organization
- Six Sexual attraction
- Seven Shades of desire from simple to complex
- Eight Details of the brain and desire
- Nine Arousal
- Ten The consequences of sexual behaviour and associated expectations
- Eleven Sexual familiarity and novelty
- Twelve Inhibition, conflict and temptation
- Thirteen How did sexual desire get here?
- Fourteen Setting the trajectory: link to adult sexuality
- Fifteen Sexual desire in interaction
- Sixteen Representations of sex
- Seventeen Sexual addiction
- Eighteen Variations in desire: general principles
- Nineteen Some forms of desire at the fringes
- Twenty The toxic fusion: violence and sexual desire
- Twenty one Sexually associated (serial) murder
- Twenty two Concluding remarks
- Notes
- References
- Index
Six - Sexual attraction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of figures
- Preface
- One What is enigmatic about sexual desire?
- Two Explaining desire: multiple perspectives
- Three Sexual desire in a broad context
- Four An incentive-based model
- Five Sex and levels of organization
- Six Sexual attraction
- Seven Shades of desire from simple to complex
- Eight Details of the brain and desire
- Nine Arousal
- Ten The consequences of sexual behaviour and associated expectations
- Eleven Sexual familiarity and novelty
- Twelve Inhibition, conflict and temptation
- Thirteen How did sexual desire get here?
- Fourteen Setting the trajectory: link to adult sexuality
- Fifteen Sexual desire in interaction
- Sixteen Representations of sex
- Seventeen Sexual addiction
- Eighteen Variations in desire: general principles
- Nineteen Some forms of desire at the fringes
- Twenty The toxic fusion: violence and sexual desire
- Twenty one Sexually associated (serial) murder
- Twenty two Concluding remarks
- Notes
- References
- Index
Summary
Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but those eyes and the minds behind the eyes have been shaped by millions of years of human evolution.
(Buss, 2003, p. 53)Attractiveness is, of course, not the same as sexual desire. For example, a heterosexual man might judge another man to be attractive without feeling any sexual desire towards him. In one experiment, heterosexual women did not show a change in pupil size (an index of desire) on viewing an image of a woman whom they described as attractive (Laeng and Falkenberg, 2007). However, an effect seen across cultures is that normally a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for someone to elicit strong sexual wanting is that they would be judged as ‘attractive’ (Ford and Beach, 1951). Physical appearance (‘attractiveness’) is valued highly by both men and women in terms of what triggers desire (Regan and Berscheid, 1999). There is a sex difference in that men tend to find women more attractive than women find men attractive (Istvan et al., 1983).
Features and qualities
The quality of attractiveness is not simply a product of Hollywood and the advertising industry, though doubtless this has a role in promoting certain stereotypes. In experiments, even human infants as young as 2–3 months of age spend more timing looking at those women’s faces which were judged by adults as attractive (Langlois et al., 1990). By 12 months of age, they spend more time interacting with strangers wearing attractive masks as compared to unattractive masks.
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- Information
- How Sexual Desire WorksThe Enigmatic Urge, pp. 128 - 133Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014