Implicit and Explicit Sexual Motives as Related, But Distinct Characteristics

ABSTRACT

A measure of implicit sexual motives—the implicit AMORE—was constructed employing the Affect Misattribution Procedure (Payne, Cheng, Govorun, & Stewart, 2005). Subscales paralleled the 8 dimensions identified previously by the self-report measure of sexual motives, the explicit AMORE (Hill & Preston, 1996). Confirmatory factor analyses supported the proposed 8-factor model in slightly revised form, which was confirmed based on a second independent set of participants. Consistent with hypotheses, the implicit scales correlated with nonconscious erotica-viewing behavior for women in a laboratory setting. In contrast to explicit scales, implicit scales were unrelated to self-report ratings of likely sexual behavior. Finally, self-reports of aspects of sexual behavior were generally associated with the measures of implicit motives independently of corresponding explicit motives for both women and men. The results support the conception of implicit sexual motives as related, but distinct from explicit sexual motives.

Acknowledgments

I thank Christopher Gunderson, Ryan Boyd, Lindsay Roberts, Joel Sprunger, and Tara Lombard for assisting in data collection. I intend to comply with the data-sharing standard of the American Psychological Association (Ethical Standard 8.14).