Abstract: The role of the facial images in arousal and attraction has been examined before but never via penile plethysmography (PPG). This retrospective chart review aimed to determine the significance and magnitude of differences in arousal measured by PPG in 1,000 men exposed to slide stimuli with or without facial blurring in subjects of various ages. Arousal in response to blurred stimuli was significantly higher than nonanonymized stimuli with modest effect sizes for slides across age and gender categories. Facial blurring increased differences in arousal between adults and adolescents with a modest effect size. Our findings support the use of facial blurring to further protect the anonymity of models and limit the ethical and legal challenges of using slide stimuli with child models.
Keywords: penile plethysmography, sexual arousal, facial blurring, paraphilias
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The effect of stimulus modality on arousal has been examined in depth. Videotapes and auditory stimuli of preferred sexual scenarios have proven to be more effective than still slides at provoking sexual arousal based on self-report and measured changes in penile tumescence in men with paraphilic and nonparaphilic interests (Fedoroff et al., 2009; Pithers & Laws, 1995). Research has also indicated that different types of stimuli are more effective at measuring differences in PPG arousal between men with different paraphilias. For example, auditory stimuli have been found to be most effective at eliciting arousal in response to sexual coercion, whereas visual stimuli tend to be more effective in discerning age and gender preferences (Lalumière & Harris, 1998).
Other elements of stimuli have been shown to contribute to arousal, though these elements are not necessarily controlled for within or between sites. For example, the presence of sound in visual stimuli has been shown to increase levels of arousal in subjects (Gaithier & Plaud, 1997). In addition, quality and realism of stimuli also play a role in arousal responses; response to still slides is affected by clarity and brightness, whereas response to audio is affected by loudness and pitch (Sekuler & Blake, 1994). Also, perceived attractiveness of the actors portrayed has an impact on arousal to video (Janssen, Carpenter, & Graham, 2003) and to still images (Landolt, Lalumière, & Quinsey, 1995). One element that has not been previously controlled for in stimuli but that we propose has an effect on arousal is the presence of facial blurring.
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The importance of the face in regulating perceived attractiveness of subjects has been previously studied using a variety of techniques, including the visual process method and eye movement–tracking studies. In the visual process method, partici-pants uncover one body part at a time to determine the attractiveness of the model (Hassebrauck, 1998). This study demonstrated that male and female subjects most often chose the face as the first area to uncover when determining the attractiveness of a member of the opposite sex in a bathing suit. The author posited that facial attractive-ness played a much larger role than the attractiveness of the body, possibly because men look at the face for emotional information, such as level of sexual excitement. It is possible that if the faces of the models used in our stimuli were found to not be attractive to the subjects, that this moderated their arousal to the stimuli, whereas with-out facial features, participants had only the body features to impact arousal.
Eye-tracking studies have previously demonstrated that when viewing slides of mod-els, men focus first and longest on faces compared with other body parts (Attard-Johnson & Bindemann, 2017; Hall et al., 2011; Nummenmaa et al., 2012). Gaze preference toward faces was also shown in men with pedophilia compared with healthy controls (Fromberger et al., 2013). When examining nude adult and child models, men with pedophilia fixated longest on the faces of children, followed by the pelvic regions of children, whereas the healthy controls fixated on faces of adults for the longest period followed by the chest regions of adults. When comparing nude versus clothed models, men spend less time examining the face and more time looking at the chest and pelvic regions in nude models (Nummenmaa et al., 2012). This study further demonstrated pupillary dilation in response to viewing the chest and pelvic regions, suggesting that the participants were more aroused by these regions. Attard-Johnson and Bindemann (2017) found that when viewing clothed subjects, nude subjects, and nude subjects with both chest and genitals blurred, men viewed the faces longest for all three image types, but spent more time viewing the chest and pelvic region when the model was nude
.When the face is not available to provide emotional cues or contribute to a model’s perceived attractiveness, focus must be shifted elsewhere. Presumably, subjects would look toward the chest and genitals for information regarding attractiveness and as a catalyst for sexual arousal. In one study that blurred the faces of their models to ensure the anonymity of their clothed (flesh colored vest and briefs) female volunteers, men tended to focus their attention on the chest and torso regions when rating attractiveness (Cornelissen, Hancock, Kiviniemi, George, & Tovée, 2009).
It is possible that facial blurring allows men to better able to focus on elements of stimuli that align with their specific sexual interests. Studies suggest that men’s fanta-sies are more likely, than those of women, to contain a focus on specific elements of a partner’s body and specific sexual acts (Arndt, Foehl, & Good, 1985; Barclay, 1973; Goldey, Avery, & van Anders, 2014; Joyal, Cossette, & Lapierre, 2015; Knafo & Jaffe, 1984; Zurbriggen & Yost, 2004).
Previously, Murphy, Ranger, Fedoroff, et al. (2015) proposed that audiotapes may be more effective for individuals who are aroused by very specific elements of a stim-ulus set, allowing them to mentally tailor scenarios to fit their particular interests, which may not be possible with video or slide stimuli that are full of visual cues. Facial blurring may be a similar take on this concept, allowing men to refocus their attention on the most personally salient aspects of a stimulus to elicit arousal.
Furthermore, facial blurring may allow subjects to depersonalize the model to a degree that they have diminished concern for the ethical implications of their arousal. This technique serves to make models more generic, diminishing the guilt that a subject may feel for becoming aroused by a child or adolescent. In this way, models may become less likely to be viewed as individuals with emotions and rights, and more likely to be a blank canvas on which subjects can project their own sexual desires and fantasies.
We analyzed our data for differences in arousal between adult and underage model stimuli to determine whether facial blurring affected the difference between responses to children and adults by using differential indices. We did find that facial blurring increased differences in arousal between adults and adolescents, by increasing penile response to adults significantly more than to adolescent stimuli. It should also be noted that our effect size for this finding was modest. This finding did not hold for younger or older child categories, so the use of this technique is unlikely to improve sensitivity and specificity of stimuli.
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