Examining the Treatment Relevance of the Approach-Avoidance Motivation Model for Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder in Women and Non-Binary Individuals

ABSTRACT

Up to 8% of cisgender women meet diagnostic criteria for Female Sexual Interest/Arousal Disorder (SIAD), a diagnosis in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, yet treatment research for SIAD remains scarce, particularly for transgender women and non-binary individuals. The treatment relevance of the Approach-Avoidance Motivation Model for SIAD was tested in a sample of cis- and transgender women, and non-binary individuals, who either met criteria for SIAD (n = 45) or reported no sexual concerns (n = 76). Participants completed an online writing exercise previously found to increase the salience of approach or avoidance sexual motivation, or a control writing task. At baseline, and 72 hours following the writing task, they completed measures of sexual motivation, sexual desire, and partnered sexual behaviors. Participants with SIAD in the approach condition significantly increased in approach sexual motivation immediately following the manipulation but these improvements were not maintained 72 hours later. Compared to baseline, participants who wrote about an approach-motivated sexual encounter experienced a decrease in sexual desire and partnered sexual behaviors, while participants who wrote about an avoidance-motivated sexual encounter had decreased motivation but increased partnered sexual behaviors 72 hours following the manipulation. Overall, findings did not show support for the relevance of the approach-avoidance motivation manipulation for SIAD. Future studies might explore novel ways of targeting sexual motivation to address sexual difficulties.

Acknowledgments

We wish to acknowledge funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research. We also wish to thank our community advisory board members, as well as Brett Makarenko, Brynn Lavery, Isha Rajvanshi, Jasmeen Mohammed, Ravena Cardeiro de Macedo, and Wyatt Fitzgerald for their assistance on the study.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Previous research referring to participants as women often did not specify how many cis- versus transgender individuals were in the samples.

² Sex assigned at birth refers to a set of biological traits, including reproductive/sexual anatomy, chromosomes, gene expression, and hormone levels, which are usually categorized as male, female, or intersex (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 2020).

³ Gender refers to the social roles, behaviors, and expressions of women, men, and gender diverse people, which exists on a broad spectrum (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, 2020).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Canadian Institutes of Health Research under Grant F19-05083.