Automatic Attention to Sexual Images of Men and Women in Androphilic, Ambiphilic, and Gynephilic Women

Abstract

Attentional resources might be automatically attracted to highly motivational stimuli such as a possible sexual partner. We tested whether attention would be automatically attracted to images of men vs women in women with a self-reported sexual attraction to men (androphilic), women (gynephilic) or to both men and women (ambiphilic) in a dot-probe paradigm. While androphilic women showed a small bias toward the female images, both ambiphilic and gynephilic women showed a strong bias toward the female images. The results show that these early automatic processes of attention are toward women in this sample of ambiphilic women and therefore inconsistent with their self-report sexual preferences.

Keywords:

• Bisexual
• ambiphilia
• gynephilia
• androphilia
• spatial attention
• dot-probe paradigm

Acknowledgment

Aimee McKinnon contributed to the development of this study.

Author contributions

Robert Snowden helped design the study, performed the statistical analysis, and contributed to the writing of the manuscript. Nicola Gray helped design the study, contributed to participant recruitment, helped write the manuscript, and supervised the students. Jasmine Rollings and Katie Uzzell helped design the study, collected the data and commented on the manuscript.

Declaration of interest

The authors report there are no competing interests to declare.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Mendeley Data at Snowden, Robert (2022), “Gender-sex dot probe task_females_April2022”, Mendeley Data, V1, doi: 10.17632/jwtfv6n4by.1.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert J. Snowden

Nicola Gray is professor of psychology at Swansea University and a Consultant Clinical and Forensic Psychologist in Swansea Bay University Health Board. She was born in Brixton, London, and educated at University College London (BSc) and the Institute of Psychiatry PhD, MSc Clinical Psychology). Her research interests are in clinical problems and offending behavior.

Nicola S. Gray

Jasmine Rollings is a Research Fellow at Nottingham Trent University. She received a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Cardiff University and a master’s degree in Research Methods from Swansea University, and is currently studying for her PhD in Psychology at the University of Portsmouth. Jasmine’s current research is concerned with individual differences and how they relate to social outcomes.”

Jasmine Rollings

Katie Uzzell is currently completing a PhD on the topic of protecting and promoting high-performance swimmers’ wellbeing at Swansea University. She also holds a BSc in Psychology and an MSc in Clinical and Abnormal Psychology from Swansea University

Katie S. Uzzell

Robert Snowden is a professor of psychology at Cardiff University. He was born in Keighley, Yorkshire and educated at York University (BSc) and Cambridge University (PhD). His research interests include psychopathy, violent and sexually violent behavior, attention, and visual perception.