Female perpetrators and the Postrefusal Sexual Persistence Scale: nonverbal sexual arousal, emotional manipulation and deception, exploitation of the intoxicated, and use of physical force or threats

Sexual Coercion by Women: The Influence of Pornography and Narcissistic and Histrionic Personality Disorder Traits. Abigail Hughes, Gayle Brewer, Roxanne Khan. Archives of Sexual Behavior, October 7 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-01538-4

Abstract: Largely overlooked in the literature, this study investigated factors influencing women’s use of sexual coercion. Specifically, pornography use and personality disorder traits linked with poor impulse control, emotional regulation, and superior sense of sexual desirability were considered. Women (N = 142) aged 16–53 years (M = 24.23, SD = 7.06) were recruited from community and student populations. Participants completed the Narcissistic and Histrionic subscales of the Personality Diagnostic Questionnaire-4, in addition to the Cyber-Pornography Use Inventory to explore the influence of their pornography use (interest, efforts to engage with pornography, and compulsivity) on their use of sexual coercion. This was measured using four subscales of the Postrefusal Sexual Persistence Scale: nonverbal sexual arousal, emotional manipulation and deception, exploitation of the intoxicated, and use of physical force or threats. Multiple regression analyses revealed that pornography use, narcissistic traits, and histrionic traits significantly predicted the use of nonverbal sexual arousal, emotional manipulation and deception, and exploitation of the intoxicated. Effort to engage with pornography was a significant individual predictor of nonverbal sexual arousal and emotional manipulation and deception, while histrionic traits were a significant individual predictor of exploitation of the intoxicated. Findings were discussed in relation to existing sexual coercion literature and potential future research.

Keywords: Female perpetration Histrionic personality traits Narcissistic personality traits Sexually explicit material


Introduction

Sexual aggression research has historically focused on male perpetration and female victimization. This approach most likely reflects the global pervasiveness of men’s sexual violence and perceptions of women as sexually passive (Denov, 2017; Krahé & Berger, 2013). However, females also sexually aggress against unwilling partners (Erulkar, 2004; Hines, 2007) and researchers have increasingly acknowledged nuances in how this might be expressed (e.g., by harassment, abuse, and coercion) (Grayston & De Luca, 1999; Ménard, Hall, Phung, Ghebrial, & Martin, 2003). Despite this, and the negative physical and psychological consequences experienced by male victims (Visser, Smith, Rissel, Richters, & Grulich, 2003), a dominant gendered perspective has resulted in a relative paucity of information on factors that may explain female sexual aggression (Campbell & Kohut, 2017; Denov, 2017). This area is worthy of investigation as pathways to sexual aggression differ for men and women (Krahé & Berger, 2017), and factors associated with sexual coercion by men may not be generalizable to female perpetrators. Indeed, Schatzel-Murphy, Harris, Knight, and Milburn (2009) found that while men and women’s sexually coercive behavior may be similar, factors symptomatic of its use might be different, with sexual compulsivity (i.e., difficulty controlling sexual urges) shown to be a dynamic influence for females. Our study, therefore, aimed to investigate factors associated with sexual compulsivity in women that might explain their use of sexually coercive behavior. Specifically, the influence of three elements of pornography use (interest, efforts to engage with pornography, and compulsivity) and narcissistic and histrionic personality traits was explored due to associations in the literature with coercive sexual tactics to obtain intimate relations.

Sexual coercion lies on the sexual aggression continuum and is defined as “the act of using pressure, alcohol or drugs, or force to have sexual contact with someone against his or her will” (Struckman-Johnson, Struckman-Johnson, & Anderson, 2003, p.76). Sexual coercion may include a range of behaviors that can be separated into four categories of increasing exploitation: (1) sexual arousal (e.g., persistent kissing and touching), (2) emotional manipulation (e.g., blackmail, questioning, or using authority), (3) alcohol and drug intoxication (e.g., purposefully getting a person drunk or taking advantage while intoxicated), and (4) physical force or threats (e.g., using physical harm). As a large body of research has established that men are more likely than women to perpetrate sexual coercion (see Krahé et al., 2015), this has overshadowed evidence that a proportion of women also report using a range of sexually coercive behavior (e.g., Hoffmann & Verona, 2018; Krahé, Waizenhöfer, & Möller, 2003; Ménard et al., 2003; Muñoz, Khan, & Cordwell, 2011; Russell & Oswald, 2001, 2002; Struckman-Johnson et al., 2003). While single studies have found female perpetration rates as high as 26% (compared to 43% for males) (see Struckman-Johnson et al., 2003), in an overview of the literature, Hines (2007) estimated rates between 10 and 20% for verbal sexual coercion, and 1 and 3% for physically forced sexual intercourse.

Due to higher rates of male perpetration, it is perhaps not surprising that fewer studies have focused on correlates of women’s sexually coercive behavior. Studies have reported that influential factors for women include peer pressure to have sex (e.g., Krahé et al., 2003), sexual compulsivity (Schatzel-Murphy et al., 2009), antagonistic attitudes toward sexual relationships (e.g., Anderson, 1996; Christopher, Madura, & Weaver, 1998; Yost & Zurbriggen, 2006), and sexual victimization experiences (e.g., Anderson, 1996; Krahé et al., 2003; Russell & Oswald, 2001). Further studies have documented the influence of a hostile personality with a dominant interpersonal style (Ménard et al., 2003) a manipulative, game-playing approach to forming intimate relations (Russell & Oswald, 2001, 2002), and pornography use (e.g., Kernsmith & Kernsmith, 2009a) thereby providing the rationale for this study.

Women’s Use of Pornography

Pornography refers to sexually explicit material developed and consumed to stimulate sexual arousal, available in versatile forms (e.g., photographs and videos) and often accessed online (Campbell & Kohut, 2017). Research has historically focused on the manner in which exposure to pornographic material influences men’s sexual attitudes and conduct. For example, it is argued that men’s use of pornography is related to sexual objectification of partners (Tylka, & Kroon Van Diest, 2015) and sexually coercive behavior (Stanley et al., 2018). Compulsive consumption of pornographic material, in particular, may be closely related to men’s sexually aggressive behavior (Gonsalves, Hodges, & Scalora, 2015). Research indicates that women also engage with pornography, although to a lesser extent than men (Ashton, McDonald, & Kirkman, 2018; Rissel, Richters, de Visser, McKee, Yeung, & Caruana, 2017). Due to disparities in methodology, estimates of women’s pornography use vary significantly across studies, ranging from 1 to 88% depending on the sample and operational definition of pornography (Campbell & Kohut, 2017). In a review of their annual statistics, Pornhub, a large Internet pornography website, reported that just over a quarter of their visitors were women and that their top trending1 search throughout 2017 was “porn for women,” representing a 1400% increase (Pornhub Insights, 2018). While some studies report that females were more likely to use pornography with a partner (e.g., Ševčíková & Daneback, 2014), other studies have found that their pornography use was more likely and more frequent when alone than with a partner (Fisher, Kohut, & Campbell, 2017).

Consistent with studies of men’s pornography consumption, research has found women’s use of pornography to be associated with attitudes toward sex, sexual conduct, and sexual activities (e.g., number of sexual partners) (Wright, Bae, & Funk, 2013). This is supported further by a recent meta-analysis that found, similar to men, women’s pornography use was associated with sexual aggression, both verbally (i.e., “verbally coercive but not physically threatening communication to obtain sex, and sexual harassment”) and physically (i.e., “use or threat of physical force to obtain sex”) (Wright, Tokunaga, & Kraus, 2016, p.191). The small number of studies in this area has meant the extent to which women’s use of pornography influences their sexually aggressive behavior remains unclear. In one such study, it was found that pornography use predicted all forms of sexual aggression in women (i.e., extortion, deceit, obligation, and emotional manipulation) except for physical violence and intimidation (Kernsmith & Kernsmith, 2009a). The dearth of literature available indicates there is scope to investigate this further, thus we consider three elements of women’s pornography use, that is (1) interest in pornography, (2) efforts to engage with pornography, in additional to (3) pornography compulsivity, which is largely overlooked despite its association with men’s sexual aggression (e.g., Gonsalves et al., 2015).


Narcissistic and Histrionic Personality Disorder Traits

Personality traits may also influence the likelihood of sexually aggressive behavior in women (Krahé et al., 2003; Russell, Doan, & King, 2017). Characteristics of the dramatic, emotional, and erratic Cluster B personality disorders (associated with poor impulse control, emotional regulation, and anger) may be particularly influential on sexual aggression (Mouilso & Calhoun, 2016). For example, narcissistic personality disorder (NPD), found in both men (7.7%) and women (4.8%) and overall in 6.2% of the general population (Stinson et al., 2008), is characterized by a grandiose sense of the self, entitlement, and low empathy for others (Emmons, 1984). In men, narcissistic personality traits are positively associated with rape supportive beliefs and negatively associated with empathy for rape victims (Bushman, Bonacci, van Dijk, & Baumeister, 2003), while NPD is related to perpetration of sexual aggression (Mouilso & Calhoun, 2016). Women with higher levels of narcissism display more negative relationship communication (Lamkin, Lavner, & Shaffer, 2017) and are more likely to engage in sexual harassment (Zeigler-Hill, Besser, Morag, & Campbell, 2016). Pertinently, narcissism is associated with women’s perpetration of sexual coercion (Kjellgren, Priebe, Svedin, Mossige, & Långström, 2011; Logan, 2008), with the entitlement/exploitativeness dimension found to be most influential (Blinkhorn, Lyons, & Almond, 2015; Ryan, Weikel, & Sprechini, 2008). Additionally, females high in narcissism were found to be just as likely as their male counterparts to react with persistence and sexually coercive tactics after being denied during a sexual advance (Blinkhorn et al., 2015). In part, this behavior may reflect the tendency for narcissistic individuals to engage in sex in order to fulfill their need for self-affirmation (Gewirtz-Meydan, 2017).

Found in 1–3% of general population (Torgersen et al., 2000) and reported twice more in women than in men (Torgersen, Kringlen, & Cramer, 2001), traits associated with histrionic personality disorder (HPD) are far less explored than NPD in relation to sexual coercion. This is somewhat surprising as defining characteristics of HPD include excessively emotional, impulsive, attention seeking behavior, and inappropriate or competitive sexual conduct (APA, 2013; Dorfman, 2010; Stone, 2005). Emotionally manipulative and intolerant of delayed gratification (Bornstein & Malka, 2009; Stone, 2005), women with HPD demand confirmation and attention from intimate partners (AlaviHejazi, Fatehizade, Bahrami, & Etemadi, 2016). A study that compared women with HPD to a matched control group without personality disorders found they were more likely to have been sexually unfaithful and report greater sexual preoccupation and sexual boredom with lower levels of sexual assertiveness and relationship satisfaction (Apt & Hurlbert, 1994). Furthermore, Apt and Hurlbert considered that HPD behavioral traits were indicative of sexual narcissism, while Widiger and Trull (2007) noted that HPD and NPD traits were likely to co-occur. The dominant, manipulative, and sexually compulsive behavioral traits found in these studies of women with NPD and HPD are pertinent as they align with extant studies reporting factors underpinning women’s perpetration of sexual coercion (e.g., Russell & Oswald, 2001, 2002; Schatzel-Murphy et al., 2009) and pornography use (e.g., Wright et al., 2013, 2016). Hence, additional research is necessary to examine the influence of both HPD and NPD traits and pornography use on women’s use of sexual aggression.


Check also Tactics of sexual coercion: when men and women won't take no for an answer. Struckman-Johnson C1, Struckman-Johnson D, Anderson PB. J Sex Res. 2003 Feb;40(1):76-86. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00224490309552168

Abstract: We investigated women's and men's reports of experiencing and using tactics of postrefusal sexual persistence, defined as persistent attempts to have sexual contact with someone who has already refused. Participants were 275 men and 381 women at Midwestern and Southern universities. More women (78%) than men (58%) reported having been subjected to such tactics since age 16; this difference was significant for the categories of sexual arousal, emotional manipulation and lies, and intoxication, and for two tactics within the physical force category (physical restraint and threats of harm). More men (40%) than women (26%) reported having used such tactics; this difference was significant for the sexual arousal, emotional manipulation and lies, and intoxication categories. We present participants' written descriptions of their experiences.

Study on the economics of ethnic enclaves (communities with high concentrations of one ethnic group usually resulting from immigration patterns)

The Economics of Ethnic Enclaves. Alex Nowrasteh. Cato at Liberty, October 3, 2019. https://www.cato.org/blog/economics-ethnic-enclaves

Full text and links at the e-addres above.

Excerpts:

Ethnic enclaves are communities with high concentrations of one ethnic group usually resulting from immigration patterns. Many scholars believe that ethnic enclaves slow immigrant assimilation into American society, a phenomenon known as the “enclave thesis.” Recent academic literature on the enclave thesis has yielded mixed results, but there are also severe research design problems due to data limitations, a lack of definitional consensus, and seemingly insurmountable endogeneity. This post will analyze key findings within the ethnic enclave literature.

Background and Definitions

[...]

Major Findings

Many studies exploit the exogenous placement of refugees by governments as quasi-natural experiments to study how the assimilation rates of those placed in ethnic enclaves compare to those who do not settle in ethnic enclaves. Since government agencies make the settlement decisions for refugees, endogeneity is less of a concern. A recent study by the National Academy of Sciences by Linna Martén, Jens Hainmueller, and Dominik Hangartner (2019) analyzed the marginal effect of increased ethnic clustering on employment outcomes by using Switzerland’s dispersal placement program for recently arrived refugees. The program assigns refugees to specific regions in the country. This program allowed researchers to compare labor market outcomes between the government-placed refugees and non-refugee immigrants who chose to settle in ethnic enclaves. The study found that settling in an ethnic enclave increased the probability of employment in Switzerland. These effects were observed with respect to the number of co-nationals, ethnicity, and language concentration in said enclaves, indicating robust short- and medium-term results.

Sweden used a similar placement strategy for refugees. Economists Per-Anders Edin, Peter Fredriksson, and Olof Åslund (2003) discovered that a one standard deviation increase in an area’s co-ethnic population caused a 13 percent bump in earnings for low-skilled immigrants of the same ethnicity placed in the area by the government. Another study of an exogenous refugee-placement program in Denmark reached three conclusions: first, there is “strong evidence that refugees with unfavorable unobserved characteristics self‐select into ethnic enclaves. Second, a relative standard deviation increase in the ethnic enclave size increases annual earnings by 18 percent on average, irrespective of skill level. Third, further findings are consistent with the explanation that ethnic networks disseminate job information, which increases the job‐worker match quality and thereby the hourly wage rate.”

Some studies, however, suggest opposite employment effects, particularly for low-skilled immigrants in ethnic enclaves. For example, George Borjas (2000) measured the impact residential segregation has on “economic assimilation,” or the convergence of immigrant wages with their native-born counterparts. Borjas found that increased residential segregation led to adverse wage effects for both newly arrived and least-educated immigrants. He also observed that increased residential sorting into ethnic enclaves lowers the likelihood an immigrant will become English-proficient but increases the likelihood they will further their education. Borjas attributes these negative results to the lack of diversity within ethnic neighborhoods after 1965, suggesting that the increased homogeneity among immigrants is depressing labor market opportunities and assimilation practices.

The National Institutes of Health found that higher ethnic concentrations in enclaves yield negative employment effects for immigrants in the United States. Hispanic immigrants living in an enclave face an almost 11 percent reduction in earnings relative to Hispanics who live elsewhere, a figure which translates to an approximate $1.37 hourly wage reduction. The authors caution, however, that their small sample size may prevent their results from representing all ethnic groups.

Another study by economists Roberto Pedace and Stephanie Rohn Kumar (2012) evaluated the effects of increased ethnic concentrations on wages and employment propensities for several ethnic groups in the United States, including Mexicans, Central Americans, Cubans, Chinese, and Indians. For Mexican, Puerto Rican, and Cuban males, the overall wage effects of living in an ethnic enclave were negative and statistically significant. For higher educated Korean and Indian immigrants, however, the opposite was true. In addition, economists Barry Chiswick and Paul Miller (2005) found that the costs of increased competition (supply) inside an ethnic enclave offset the potential economic gains from larger ethnic networks in California.

Entrepreneurship inside ethnic enclaves also affects whether their members receive net positive or negative economic impacts. Per-Anders Edin, Peter Fredriksson, Olof Åslund (2003) conclude that higher rates of ethnic self-employment put upward pressure on wages. Alejandro Portes (1987) describes the importance of Cuban-owned banking services that extended funds to recent immigrants with little collateral. These services immensely contributed to the entrepreneurial vibrancy of Miami, especially in the wake of the Mariel Boatlift. Additionally, economist Maude Toussaint-Comeau found that as the size of the ethnic network increases (an indicator of the enclave’s quality), so does the probability that immigrants are self-employed.

A major qualification in the above-cited literature is that increasing an enclave’s educational quality significantly improves employment outcomes and rates of cultural assimilation, such as English language acquisition. For instance, Anna Daam (2014) found that in Denmark, co-ethnics with higher skills and employment rates matter far more than the nominal size of the ethnic enclave. In other words, improving the human capital within and around the ethnic enclave has a far greater effect on immigrant economic success than whether or not immigrants live in ethnic enclaves. The Institute of Labor Economics surveyed the literature and observed that improved quality measures, like education and income, are more important than the scale of an enclave. Economists David M. Cutler, Edward L. Glaeser, Jacob L. Vigdor (2007) also found that an immigrant’s education is more important than his residence in an ethnic enclave. Another study indicates that increased legalization status for immigrants increases immigrant wages and the likelihood they will become naturalized citizens.

Discussion

[...]

Michael N. Peterson helped research and write this blog post.

Large increases in gasoline prices between the ages of 15-18 significantly reduce the likelihood of driving a private automobile to work & the total annual vehicle miles traveled later in life; also increases public transit use

Formative Experiences and the Price of Gasoline. Christopher Severen & Arthur A. van Benthem. Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia Working Paper WP 19-35, September 2019. https://doi.org/10.21799/frbp.wp.2019.3

Abstract: An individual’s initial experiences with a common good, such as gasoline, can shape their behavior for decades. We first show that the 1979 oil crisis had a persistent negative effect on the likelihood that individuals that came of driving age during this time drove to work in the year 2000 (i.e., in their mid 30s).  The effect is stronger for those with lower incomes and those in cities.  Combining data on many cohorts, we then show that large increases in gasoline prices between the ages of 15 and 18 significantly reduce both (i) the likelihood of driving a private automobile to work and (ii) total annual vehicle miles traveled later in life, while also increasing public transit use.  Differences in driver license age requirements generate additional variation in the formative window.  These effects cannot be explained by contemporaneous income and do not appear to be only due to increased costs from delayed driving skill acquisition.  Instead, they seem to reflect the formation of preferences for driving or persistent changes in the perceived costs of driving.

Keywords:  formative experiences, preference persistence, path dependence, drivingbehavior, gasoline price
JEL Codes: D12, D90, L91, Q41, R41

Individual variations in the modular organization of functional brain networks: higher intelligence seems associated with higher temporal stability (lower temporal variability) of brain network modularity

Temporal stability of functional brain modules associated with human intelligence. Kirsten Hilger et al. Human Brain Mapping, October 6 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24807

Abstract: Individual differences in general cognitive ability (i.e., intelligence) have been linked to individual variations in the modular organization of functional brain networks. However, these analyses have been limited to static (time‐averaged) connectivity, and have not yet addressed whether dynamic changes in the configuration of brain networks relate to general intelligence. Here, we used multiband functional MRI resting‐state data (N = 281) and estimated subject‐specific time‐varying functional connectivity networks. Modularity optimization was applied to determine individual time‐variant module partitions and to assess fluctuations in modularity across time. We show that higher intelligence, indexed by an established composite measure, the Wechsler Abbreviated Scale of Intelligence (WASI), is associated with higher temporal stability (lower temporal variability) of brain network modularity. Post‐hoc analyses reveal that subjects with higher intelligence scores engage in fewer periods of extremely high modularity — which are characterized by greater disconnection of task‐positive from task‐negative networks. Further, we show that brain regions of the dorsal attention network contribute most to the observed effect. In sum, our study suggests that investigating the temporal dynamics of functional brain network topology contributes to our understanding of the neural bases of general cognitive abilities.

1 INTRODUCTION

Intelligence describes our ability to reason, to understand complex ideas, to learn from experiences, and to adapt effectively to the environment (Neisser et al., 1996). Understanding the biological bases of human intelligence is an important scientific aim, and neuroscientific research has begun to contribute insights about how individual differences in brain function (Duncan, 2005; Sripada, Angstadt, & Rutherford, 2018), brain structure (Gregory et al., 2016; Haier, Jung, Yeo, Head, & Alkire, 2004), and intrinsic brain connectivity (Hilger, Ekman, Fiebach, & Basten, 2017a; Van den Heuvel, Stam, Kahn, & Hulshoff Pol, 2009) relate to general intelligence (for review see Basten, Hilger, & Fiebach, 2015; Jung & Haier, 2007).

Recent years have seen an increasing interest in understanding how human cognition emerges from the intrinsic organization of functional brain networks (Park & Friston, 2013), often studied using functional MRI (fMRI) in the absence of task demands (i.e., under resting‐state conditions; Biswal, Yetkin, Haughton, & Hyde, 1995). The topology of these networks determines how information is transferred between brain regions, and graph theory provides a set of tools to study these topological characteristics (Rubinov & Sporns, 2010). In the field of intelligence research, early graph‐theoretical work proposed that global properties of brain networks such as higher global network efficiency are associated with higher intelligence (van den Heuvel et al., 2009), a finding not replicated in more recent studies (Kruschwitz, Waller, Daedelow, Walter, & Veer, 2018; Pamplona, Santos Neto, Rosset, Rogers, & Salmon, 2015). In contrast, other studies have suggested that intelligence is related to efficiency in the interconnections of specific brain regions (Hilger et al., 2017a). Graph‐theoretical investigations revealed further that the human brain exhibits a hierarchically modular organization with clusters of nodes (modules, subnetworks) that are densely connected among each other but only sparsely coupled to nodes in other modules (Meunier, Lambiotte, & Bullmore, 2010; Sporns & Betzel, 2016). A modular organization balances segregated and integrated information processing, both of which are important for human cognition (Cohen & D'Esposito, 2016). Region‐specific modularity was recently also shown to covary significantly with individual differences in general intelligence (Hilger, Ekman, Fiebach, & Basten, 2017b).

The functional brain network correlates of intelligence were so far mostly studied as a static (i.e., time‐invariant) property of the human brain, that is, by averaging time courses of neural activation across the entire duration of a resting‐state fMRI scan (typically 5–10 min). This approach, however, ignores that intrinsic brain networks vary substantially across time (Cohen, 2018; Lurie et al., 2018; Zalesky, Fornito, Cocchi, Gollo, & Breakspear, 2014). Importantly, it has been shown that the dynamic interplay between states of high integration (low modularity) versus high segregation (high modularity) is linked to different levels of attention (Shine, Koyejo, & Poldrack, 2016) and cognitive performance (Shine et al., 2016). These first results suggest that the study of network dynamics has great potential for providing insights into human cognition from a mechanistic point of view — and thus also for advancing our understanding about the neural mechanisms underlying different levels of general cognitive ability.

Here, we apply graph‐theoretical modularity analyses to resting‐state BOLD fMRI data from a large sample of healthy adult humans (N = 281) to test the hypothesis that intelligence covaries significantly with the amount of dynamic reconfiguration within modularly organized, intrinsic brain networks. Going beyond previous work, we measured global modularity at different spatial scales, to gain insights into the brain's intrinsic network architecture beyond an arbitrarily chosen resolution level. The results of this analysis replicate and extend our previous finding that intelligence is not related to global modularity of static (i.e., time‐invariant) networks (Hilger et al., 2017b). Most importantly, we observed an association between intelligence and dynamic network reconfiguration, such that more intelligent persons show greater stability of network segregation over time.




---
Data Availability Statement: All data used in the current study can be accessed online under: http://fcon_1000.projects.nitrc.org/indi/enhanced/. The preprocessing pipeline CCS is also freely available to the public via GitHub (https://github.com/zuoxinian/CCS) or http://lfcd.psych.ac.cn/ccs.html. All further analysis code used in the current study has been deposited on GitHub (https://github.com/KirstenHilger/Dynamic‐Brain‐Network‐Modularity) and Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/2918712).

When evolution, human sexuality, and the Western world collide: We are failing to recognize that exciting, primal sex in a trusting, respectful relationship requires the same elements we vilify in men today

The End of Sex: When evolution, human sexuality, and the Western world collide. Marianne Brandon and James Simon. Psychology Today, Oct 06, 2019. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201910/the-end-sex

Note: This article is a guest post co-authored by Drs. Marianne Brandon* and James Simon*, with an epilogue by the blog author, Glenn Geher.

Excerpts:

His wife having gone to bed early, he locked the basement door to ensure privacy. He had planned this moment all day. Unlike his wife, who seemingly had lost interest in sex years ago, his lover was waiting downstairs, eager to please.

Never critical or demanding, with such soft eyes and skin, sex had become such a pleasure. He had even come to love the way his lover pronounced his name. In spite of being a robot, she somehow managed to say it with such tenderness…..

We have become a massive, unintended sexual experiment. Our understanding of sex and gender is evolving at astonishing rates. Paradoxically, as powerful, exhilarating, and necessary as this process is for our collective future, we are simultaneously at a perilous moment for the future of intimacy and intimate relationships.

Forcing sex into a politically correct paradigm annihilates it.

Sexual frequency today is less than all prior decades studied—at least, people are having less sex with their partners. Rates of sexual dissatisfaction and sexual dysfunction are astoundingly high. This is due to a variety of factors that are merging to create a perfect storm—technological advances, mobile lifestyles, increasing daily tasks, rising expectations for long-term relationships, and information overload.

Yet there is something even more fundamentally awry. The very empowering of women and the culturally valued softening of men has suddenly created a new way of engaging in the bedroom as much as in the boardroom, and our evolutionary psychology has not caught up. This is a serious social problem because intimacy is not an expendable aspect of humanity.

Our insistence that men and women are more alike than different is true in almost all aspects of living, except for sex. Human sexuality—the sexuality of all mammals in general and primates in particular—has primal, biological roots. And when people work with, rather than against, these instincts, their sex gets better. Gender equality does not imply gender equivalence—at least, not in the bedroom.

The extraordinary gains provided by the feminist movement have been a thrilling first in modern history. Women’s expectations about sex have appropriately changed: They demand more pleasure from sex and an equal romantic partnership; women are more comfortable engaging in sexually open behaviors, including hook-ups and sexual experimentation.

It is not just women who have benefitted. In contrast to old-fashioned, male sexual stereotypes, many mature men today enjoy sexually assertive women. They appreciate a social climate that supports releasing restrictive pressures always to be ready and interested in sex: always having to be the sexual initiator, and being responsible for their partners’ sexual pleasure. These shifts are reflected in many men gravitating to sexual relationships with older women, their interest in being the primary caretaker of their children, and a decreased concern with being the primary breadwinner of a household.  

Many men are pleased to have escaped the pressure of old-fashioned stereotypes of masculinity—being eternally dominant, carrying the financial burden of the household, having a reduced role in parenting, and avoiding emotional expression. And those who identify with a non-binary sexual identity may now live authentically, with freedom of self-expression.

In spite of these many hard-fought liberties for all genders, in some surprising and very significant ways, sex has become more complicated. In the privacy of our respective psychological medical practices, we regularly hear women say, “In the bedroom, he is passive. Almost meek. It’s hard to respect him, let alone have sex with him!” Or, “He’s so cautious and hesitant in the bedroom! It’s such a turnoff.”

Outside of sexual role play in certain fetishistic circles, for most women, there is no pleasure in sexually dominating a weaker partner. For women in long-term, committed relationships, the exquisite feeling of sexual surrender may paradoxically be more likely to unfold with men who express their sensuality in a more bold, self-assured style—literally, when she’s not the strongest force in the bedroom.

The truth is, modern women enjoy the more lusty, primal aspects of love-making. Polite sex holds little interest for them—they’d rather do the dishes. And what about men? Despite the valuable outing of abhorrent men via #MeToo, our culture is filled with men who respect women, and who long to share fulfilling sexual relationships with the women they love.

These men have learned that to show respect to their female partners, they should obtain verbal permission for sex, and to avoid at all costs any behavior in the bedroom that may be regarded as aggressive or dominant. This sounds right in theory. Yet behind the closed doors of our offices, wives and girlfriends experience these men as passive and uninteresting in the bedroom. And before long, sex ceases.

What we are failing to recognize is that exciting, primal sex in a trusting, respectful relationship requires the same elements we vilify in men today. We teach men to contain their sexual interest, resist assertive overtures, and hide their sexual longing. How confusing it must be for a man to develop a sensitive, responsive, polite sexual style, only to be ultimately told by the woman he marries that he is a boring and uninteresting lover. How depressing for a woman who is confident and secure in her sexuality to feel sexually unmet by the man who is to be her sexual playmate for a lifetime!

Experiencing her partner’s sexual confidence and longing is a fundamental aspect of good sex for a majority of women. Stripping men of their sexual assertiveness diffuses women's sexual pleasure. Women are not experiencing this shift in their relationship and sexual dynamics as empowering. They are grief-stricken over what their lives are missing.

In our noble efforts to make sex politically correct, we are ignoring a fundamental aspect of sexuality. Exciting sex—primal sex—emanates from the more ancient biology we share with other mammals. Our biological nature has instilled in all male and female mammals some basic, unique instincts that make them want sex. Human bodies continue to respond to sexual triggers as our ancestors did, thousands of years ago.

Our combination of an evolved cerebral cortex coupled with our primitive sexual biology presents interesting and often challenging scenarios for us all. While our minds have matured and evolved to think in very different ways than our primate ancestors, our bodies continue to receive sexual marching orders from our more primitive brain regions. Herein lies the potential for infinite difficulty. Without comfort with our most basic sexual instincts as male or female, it is challenging to build a creative sexual repertoire with a beloved long-term partner.
article continues after advertisement

Without sex, couples describe themselves as best friends. Proud as such couples may be of feeling close and connected, they lack the desire to make love. What’s at stake here is something very basic to our humanity—our deepest connection to our chosen other, and to our own sexual selves.

We are heading down a dangerous path, yet we also have before us an extraordinary opportunity. For the first time in history, because of the equality and respect prompted by the feminist movement, we have the capacity to manifest extraordinary sex in long-term, committed relationships. Triumphantly, a woman can now choose to feel vulnerable during sex, because it feels good—not because she is forced into that role.

Exploring sex and relationships from an evolutionary perspective does not imply that men and women are destined to return to fixed sexual roles. An immutable sexual style would be unappealing for most modern couples. But comfort in our most basic instincts enables couples to manifest potent sexual reflexes that have more recently been denied.

Our next undertaking as feminists, male and female, is to return to our core and collect what is precious that we have lost in these last decades of battle. Our efforts to make sex less about the primal brain and, instead, more politically correct, are forcing exciting sex onto a darker playground. Increasingly, men and women are seeking outlets for their primal sexual energy that can be damaging to their intimate relationships, such as overuse of porn and extramarital affairs.

Sex robots will soon offer non-critical, always-available alternatives for those who find sexual relationships uncomfortably complex, anxiety-provoking, or just too much hassle. Technology can accomplish what sex used to—procreation and sexual satisfaction.

This future is not simply a sci-fi story. It is the next logical step from where we are. However, we can choose a different path. Passionate love-making and intimacy do not have to be a casualty of our social growth. Harnessing sexual instincts within a trusting, mutually respectful, intimate relationship can offer the glue that keeps intimacy strong and desirable. It feeds more than our sexual needs; it feeds the soul of our humanity.


Epilogue (by Glenn Geher)

Understanding our sexuality is foundational to understanding the human experience. The nature of human sexuality evolved over millennia. Reproduction is as basic as any process when it comes to the living world.

Cultural evolution, which is ultimately a product of our biological evolution, progresses at a rapid pace compared with the pace of organic evolution. Cultural evolution is exciting and profound. As Drs. Brandon and Simon have articulated so clearly here, norms surrounding relationships and sexuality, resulting from cultural evolution, have been advancing at breakneck speed over the past several decades, leading to all kinds of novel attitudes, beliefs, and technologies.

While our brave new world has lots of amazing new opportunities and affordances for all of us, we need to always keep in mind that the modern world is deeply mismatched from ancestral human conditions in many important ways (see our new book, Positive Evolutionary Psychology, Geher & Wedberg, 2020). And evolutionary mismatch often leads to problems.

When modern technology and human mating meet head-on, as is the case with sex robots and pornography, we need to look before we leap. Our evolved relationship psychology is the result of thousands of generations of organic evolution. As Drs. Brandon and Simon warn, we ignore our evolved sexual psychology to our own peril.

Full text with links at https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/201910/the-end-sex

---------------------------------------------------------------
*Dr. Brandon is a clinical psychologist and Diplomat in sex therapy. She is the author of Monogamy: The Untold Story, co-author of Reclaiming Desire: 4 Keys to Finding Your Lost Libido, and author of the ebook Unlocking the Sexy In Surrender: Using the Neuroscience of Power to Recharge Your Sex Life, as well as professional articles exploring evolutionary theory and sexuality, the challenges of monogamy, gender differences in sexual expression, and aging and sex.

*Dr. Simon is a clinical professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the George Washington University School of Medicine, and he is the current President of the International Society for Study of Women’s Sexual Health. Dr. Simon served as principal investigator on more than 300 clinical trials, research grants, and scholarships in the area of women's health. He has consistently been ranked as a top doctor nationally and internationally.

References

Geher, G. & Wedberg, N. (2020). Positive Evolutionary Psychology: Darwin’s Guide to Living a Richer Life. New York: Oxford University Press.

Glenn Geher, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is founding director of the campus’ Evolutionary Studies (EvoS) program.

Historical Traumas and the Roots of Political Distrust: Political Inference from the Great Chinese Famine

Historical Traumas and the Roots of Political Distrust: Political Inference from the Great Chinese Famine. Yuyu Chen, David Y. Yang. October 2019. Draft. http://davidyyang.com/pdfs/famine_draft.pdf

Abstract: Political trust is the foundation of authoritarian regimes’ legitimacy, and it is often sustained by propaganda. When does propaganda reach its limit, and what are the consequences when propaganda is falsified? We study the causal effect of the Great Chinese Famine (1958-1961) on survivors’ political distrust. Policy failures led to the Famine, but the propaganda blamed drought for the disaster. Information that directly contradicted the propaganda — experiences of severe Famine in the absence of abnormal drought conditions — was quasi-randomly available to some citizens, but not others. Using a nationally representative survey, we employ a difference-in-differences strategy to compare individuals who were exposed to different intensities of the Famine across regions with different levels of drought during the Famine. The Famine survivors inferred the government’s liability from starvation experiences and the drought conditions, and they were more likely to dismiss the propaganda and blame the government for the Famine if they observed regular weather conditions during the Famine. As a result, these individuals expressed significantly less trust in the government. Costs of falsified propaganda are substantial, since the dampened political trust has turned into a stable political ideology. The distrust persists even half a century after the Famine, has been transmitted to the subsequent generation, and has spilled over to a broad range of political attitudes unrelated to the Famine.

Keywords: Political Trust, Political Attitudes, China, Authoritarian Regime, Persistence
JEL Classification: D83, P26, Z13

Following bilateral hippocampal lesions, patient have more frequent déja vus and prescience episodes

Déjà vu and prescience in a case of severe episodic amnesia following bilateral hippocampal lesions. Jonathan Curot, Jérémie Pariente, Jean Michel Hupé, Jean-Albert Lotterie, Hélène Mirabel & Emmanuel J. Barbeau. Memory, Oct 6 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2019.1673426

ABSTRACT: Several studies pertaining to déjà vu have consistently made a connection with the perirhinal region, a region located below the hippocampus. This idea is strengthened by the fact that déjà vu is an erroneous sense of familiarity and that familiarity appears to largely depend on the perirhinal region in healthy subjects. In this context, the role of the hippocampus is particularly unclear as it is unknown whether or not it plays a role in the genesis of déjà vu. We report on the case of OHVR, an epileptic patient who suffers from severe episodic amnesia related to massive isolated bilateral damage to the hippocampus. In contrast, the perirhinal region is intact structurally and functionally. This patient reports frequent déjà vu but also another experiential phenomenon with a prominent feeling of prescience, which shows some of the characteristics of déjà vécu. She clearly distinguishes both. She also developed a form of synaesthesia by attributing affective valence to numbers. This study shows that déjà vu can occur in cases of amnesia with massively damaged hippocampi and confirms that the perirhinal region is a core region for déjà vu, using a different approach from previous reports. It also provides clues about a potential influence of hippocampal alterations in déjà vécu.

KEYWORDS: Déjà vécu, recollection, hippocampus, familiarity, recognition memory, perirhinal cortex, synaesthesia

Discussion

To our knowledge, this case study is the first to report on
the experience of déjà vu in a patient with severe episodic
amnesia and massive isolated hippocampal atrophy. In
addition, our patient also reported unusually frequent
experiential phenomena with a prominent feeling of prescience
as well as synaesthesia.

Two types of subjective experiences
In one of the most recent and exhaustive reviews on déjàexperiences
in epilepsy, Illman et al. (2012) suggested that
inconsistencies about déjà-experiences stem from a
problem of definition. These authors distinguished in particular
déjà vu, an inappropriate sense of familiarity, from
déjà vécu, an erroneous sensation of recollecting contextual
information. These qualitatively different phenomenological
experiences may rely on functionally independent
neural substrates: déjà vu – a “pure” familiarity experience –
that relies on a network of brain structures that process
familiarity, including most notably the perirhinal cortex,
and déjà vécu – a “recollective” experience – that relies
on a network centred on the hippocampus (Illman et al.,
2012). OHVR could clearly differentiate between two types
of subjective phenomena: one without prescience that
appears to match the definition of déjà vu and another
associated with prescience. One question is whether or
not the prescience experience is related to déjà vécu. In
the following sections, we discuss these two types of experience
in OHVR along with their possible neural correlates.

Déjà vu in OHVR
OHVR clearly reported the frequent occurrence of “pure”
déjà vu without any prescience. She spontaneously insisted
on the idea that in this case she was a “spectator” which
matches the ideas of Illman et al. (2012) about déjà vu.
She also firmly differentiated it from the other type of
her experiential phenomena. Whether OVHR experiences
déjà vu of a similar type to that experienced by healthy
subjects is a matter to be discussed. One study compared
déjà vu in epileptic patients and healthy subjects (Warren-
Gash & Zeman, 2014) and arrived at the conclusion that
déjà vu was qualitatively similar but that in epileptic
patients it was also associated with distinct features,
including derealisation (a sensation in which the external
environment appears unfamiliar, with other people
appearing like actors and the world appearing to be twodimensional
or like a stage set, as defined by the DMS-IV
and ICD-10. For a review see Hunter, Sierra, & David,
2004). OHVR’s déjà vu seems to fit well with this report.
She was aware that her sense of familiarity was inappropriate
(Brázdil et al., 2012; Illman et al., 2012). The knowledge
that the sensation is wrong is a major aspect of the déjà vu
sensation (O’Connor & Moulin, 2010). Our patient’s description
was consistent with those by O’Connor and Moulin
(2008) and Martin et al. (2012) as she explicitly reported
that her inappropriate sense of familiarity could initially
start with specific objects (e.g., “glasses” or “a pen”) and
secondarily and quickly expanded to the entire situation
and environment. Her déjà vu lasted a few seconds as in
control subjects. However, the feeling of derealisation
associated with her déjà vu was more pronounced than
for control subjects.
What makes OHVR unusual is that she suffers from
severe episodic amnesia due to massive and isolated bilateral
lesions of the hippocampus. Despite the lack of specific
experimental tasks to evaluate recollection and familiarity
specifically, OHVR’s case is highly suggestive of an episodic
amnesia: performance on context-rich and relational
memory tests was severely impaired, both clinically and
on neuropsychological tests, and with both verbal and
visual material (standard score on both the Logical
Memory and the Family Picture subtests delayed recall:
1). Such results match the finding that OHVR’s hippocampi
were severely damaged. In contrast, the performance on
context-free memory tests such as semantic memory (standard
score on the Information subtest: 9) or recognition
memory tests, where performance can rely on familiarity
(Face recognition subtest or Doors recognition), showed
that these were considerably preserved. Context-free
memory largely depends on anterior subhippocampal
structures (Barbeau, Pariente, Felician, & Puel, 2011; Jonin
et al., 2018; Vargha-khadem et al., 1997), including the perirhinal
cortex. The perirhinal cortex appeared to be preserved
in OHVR both structurally (MRI) and functionally
(PET). Therefore, this case report suggests that déjà vu
can occur in the absence of recollection and a functional
hippocampus and appears to correspond with the hypothesis
by Spatt (2002) and Illman et al. (2012) that déjà vu
depends on the activation of a neocortical familiarity
system. A debate between the respective roles of the
entorhinal cortex and the perirhinal cortex still remains to
be solved however. In the study by Bartolomei et al.
(2004), déjà vu was induced more often by stimulation of
the entorhinal than the perirhinal cortex. However, the
exact effect (i.e., local excitation or inhibition) of these electrical
stimulations is largely unclear and it is difficult to infer
from this the exact role of each structure. In OHVR, hypometabolism
of the right entorhinal cortex was observed.
Overall, these observations seem to confirm that the
rhinal region is as a core region in déjà vu but the role of
the entorhinal and perirhinal cortices in this experiential
phenomenon must still be clarified.
At first sight, OHVR’s case seems to suggest that recollection
or the hippocampus plays no role in déjà vu.
According to this hypothesis, it is a dysfunction within the
perirhinal region / familiarity system that induces déjà vu,
possibly in relation to epileptic activities in this region.
However, an alternative hypothesis is that it is a dysfunction
between the perirhinal region and the hippocampus
that is at the origin of déjà vu. Although OHVR’s hippocampi
were massively damaged in comparison to the
usual standards, the possibility must be considered that
some neuronal activity remains in this structure, enough
to trigger erroneous signals that are misinterpreted in the
perirhinal region. A hypothesis stemming from this
finding is that the more severe the atrophy of the hippocampi
(in isolation, i.e., with preserved subhippocampal
structures), the more déjà vu there might be. However,
this specific hypothesis should be tested in future studies
in epileptic patients, which would help to clarify whether
or not the hippocampus plays a role in déjà vu.

A subjective experience with a prominent feeling of
prescience
Our patient also frequently experienced a second type of
subjective phenomenon with a prominent feeling that
she describes as feeling like she could predict the future.
Some features of this subjective feeling match the
definition of prescience and corresponds with the conceptual
definition of déjà vécu by Illman et al. Experimental
evidence following the re-creation of a déjà vu sensation
in a virtual environment suggests that déjà vu may be
related to an illusion of prediction (Cleary & Claxton,
2018). Interestingly, despite making a clear distinction
between both phenomena, OHVR also acknowledged
that the phenomenon with prescience could occur sometimes
with pure déjà vu, but it was always after déjà vu,
which could be suggestive of evidence of certain dynamics
between these two experiential phenomena. To some
extent, OHVR’s case also supports the idea of some proximity
between déjà vu and prescience as both coincided
chronologically with the development of anterograde
amnesia and hippocampal dysfunction. This seems to fit
data from healthy subjects since approximately 16% of
them report feelings of prescience at least once a year
while having a feeling of déjà vu. Another 17% also know
about this feeling in association with déjà vu (Mumoli et al.,
2017). From this, it can be logically deduced that if familiarity
is experienced first and if this feeling persists over a
few seconds, it could lead to the feeling that the future
could be (or should be) predicted. Therefore, déjà vu
with prescience would be more intense and last longer.
This hypothesis can easily be tested in healthy subjects.
Nonetheless, other theoretical concepts include prescience
as a feature that helps to separate two déjà-experiences,
déjà vu and déjà vécu. Supposedly, déjà vu is devoid
of any feeling of prescience whereas déjà vécu integrates it
in association with emotions, source or context and
content (Illman et al., 2012). OHVR spontaneously insisted
on a distinction between her “déjà vu” and this other
feeling she could not name precisely (she sometimes
named it “prediction”, sometimes “support”). To the question:
“Are they two different phenomena for you?” she
answered: “Yes”, although she never used the terms déjà
vu or déjà vécu to describe this phenomenon. To the question:
“Are they concomitant or not necessarily linked?” she
also responded: “Sometimes, but not necessarily”. In fact,
OHVR’s feelings of premonition featured some aspects of
déjà vécu. She spontaneously emphasised that she was
an “actor” during prescience (while being a “spectator”
during déjà vu). This agency component is a feature of
autonoetic consciousness during recollection (Metcalfe &
Son, 2012; Piolino et al., 2003; Tulving, 1985) and this
state of consciousness may correspond to a dysfunctional
recollection during déjà vécu. She also clearly experienced
an erroneous sensation of time, which was absent from her
déjà vu experiences. However, and this is inconsistently
with Illman’s definition of déjà vécu, she never related
this experience to a “prior experience”. In brief, OHVR
clearly makes a distinction between two different types
of experiential phenomena, déjà vu, and a second one,
which resembles déjà vécu. This second phenomenon is
close to but does not exactly fit the definition of déjà
vécu (Illman et al., 2012). Further investigations of déjà
vécu are therefore needed.
This is an important discussion as the conceptual
entity of déjà vécu lacks a clear neuroanatomical substrate.
Therefore, OHVR’s second phenomenon could be
a way to approach the neural substrate of déja-vécu
and its components. To date, only 4 cases of prescience
have been described and studied in detail, but they were
not related to déjà vécu (Sadler & Rahey, 2004). These
authors found prescience phenomena in only 3 of 927
epileptic patients and they also quoted a fourth case
reported by Gloor et al. (1982). Prescience in experiential
phenomena seems to be infrequent but may have been
underestimated because of a lack of detailed reports.
Interestingly, Sadler and Rahey (2004) also asserted
that prescience must be distinguished from déjà vu,
since the 4 patients they described could clearly make
a distinction between the two phenomena. One of
their patients had an unknown aetiology and two had
bitemporal interictal spikes (two had bilateral temporal
seizures and only right discharge-induced prescience,
for two no seizures were recorded). Our patient has
similar epileptic characteristics (bitemporal epilepsy of
unknown origin).
During the transient phenomena associated with prescience,
she experienced an erroneous relation to time,
giving her the brief impression of being able to foresee
the future. A damaged hippocampus, severely impaired
in her case, could support such a symptomatology and
an erroneous temporal arrangement of the sequence of
events. Projection into the future is an inseparable mechanism
of episodic memory (Addis & Schacter, 2012; Klein,
2013). The recovery of an episodic autobiographical
memory involves a mental travel back to the past, but individuals
also become aware of their own identity in the
future (Tulving, 2002, 2005; Tulving, Voi, Routh, & Loftus,
1983). Tulving (1985) and Klein, Loftus, & Kihlstrom (2002)
have shown that amnesic patients may have difficulty imagining
the future. Hassabis, Kumaran, and Maguire (2007),
in a functional MRI study, demonstrated that the construction
of new scenes involves a network comprising the hippocampus,
the parahippocampal gyrus, the retrosplenial
cortex and the posterior parietal cortex. Therefore, the
same brain regions are activated when patients think of
past or future events (Addis, Moscovitch, & McAndrews,
2007; Okuda et al., 2003). Consequently, the episodic
system may contribute significantly to imagining the
future (Addis et al., 2007). Addis and Schacter (2012)
suggested that 3 processes might be particularly dependent
on the hippocampus: (1) allowing access to details
stored in memory to develop new scenarios, (2) combining
these different details in a spatio-temporal context (3)
encoding simulation of a future project in memory so
that it can influence future behaviours (Addis & Schacter,
2012). In addition, “time cells” that encode different successive
moments of an experiment and recognize the time
intervals between each episode have been discovered in
the hippocampus (Eichenbaum, 2013; MacDonald,
Lepage, Eden, & Eichenbaum, 2011). Therefore, the hippocampus
might be an essential structure for learning
sequences of events, allowing the brain to distinguish
memories for conceptually similar but temporally distinct
episodes, but also to associate temporally contiguous representations
linked to independent experiences (Ranganath
& Hsieh, 2016). Considering the roles played by the
hippocampus in the projection into the future and the temporal
organization of memory representations, we hypothesize
that prescience might be directly related to
hippocampal dysfunction in parallel with the preservation
of subhippocampal structures, at least in epileptic patients.
In fact, OHVR’s cognitive profile is the opposite of the
impaired familiarity/intact recollection of epileptic patients
who experienced déjà vu as reported in the study by
Martin et al. (2012). One possibility could be that in OHVR
a feeling of familiarity might be an indication of impending
retrieval, i.e., interpreted as prescience, which might never
happen due to hippocampal damage.

Acquired synaesthesia in OHVR?
In our patient, her disease (of unknown aetiology) was also
associated with the awareness of synaesthesia together
with a strong interest for numbers approximately three
years after onset. For example, she reported that she developed
the habit of counting all the time until she reached a
number she liked and therefore experienced a pleasurable
emotion. Synesthetic associations are thought to be
acquired most often during childhood and they may constitute
a variant of childhood memories (Witthoft &
Winaver, 2013). This so-called developmental synaesthesia
is a particular feature of subjective experience, considered
as non-pathological and shared by only a fraction of the
population. The estimated prevalence varies widely
according to the definition and criteria, from a few to
approximately ten percent (Chun & Hupé, 2016; Rouw &
Scholte, 2016; Simner, 2012; Simner & Carmichael, 2015;
Watson et al., 2017). Many synaesthetes only become
aware of their particularity late in life, when they learn
about the phenomenon or start to pay special attention
to their inner life. This could have been the case for our
patient, her attribution of affective valence for numbers
having been kept at the sub-conscious level until then.
However, most synaesthetes report that they experienced
their synesthetic associations “as far as they can remember”,
even while acknowledging that they had not been
conscious of them. Our patient clearly reported not
having any synaesthetic experience before her epileptic
episodes, suggesting a causal link. However, her memory
difficulties may also have prevented her from remembering
her childhood clearly enough.
Acquired synaesthesia in adults is rare and has been
reported in very different contexts: following psychotropic
and drug ingestion (Luke & Terhune, 2013; Sinke et al.,
2012), migraine (Alstadhaug & Benjaminsen, 2010; Podoll
& Robinson, 2002), after neuropathology involving the
optic nerve and/or chiasm (Afra, Funke, & Matsuo, 2009)
or blindness (Armel & Ramachandran, 1999; Niccolai,
Jennes, Stoerig, & Van Leeuwen, 2012), after a head
injury (but without visible lesions on MRI) (Brogaard,
Vanni, & Silvanto, 2013) or a thalamic stroke (Ro et al.,
2007; Schweizer et al., 2013). In most cases, no focal brain
lesion could be identified and the diversity of the cases
makes a common neurological substrate unlikely. In
addition, acquired variants of synaesthesia seem to be
qualitatively different from developmental synaesthesia,
involving mostly low-level sensory triggers rather than
learned symbols as observed for our patient and in developmental
synaesthesia (Ward, 2013).
To date, no epidemiological study has tested whether
there is a higher prevalence of synaesthetes in epileptic
patients. Similarly, no case of acquired synaesthesia has
been reported after hippocampal lesions, or formally
associated with déjà vu. The neural correlates of developmental
synaesthesia remain to be identified (Hupé &
Dojat, 2015), and therefore, there is no indication as to
whether or not the hippocampus and subhippocampal
regions are involved. Whether or not there is any causal
link between hippocampal atrophy and the appearance
of synaesthesia in our patient therefore remains an open
question. This case clearly calls for further investigation
of synaesthesia in (temporal lobe) epilepsy in future
studies, in relation, or not in relation to déjà vu.
Temporal and extra-temporal remapping within memory
networks have been demonstrated in TLE patients (verbal
and visual encoding memory tasks during functional MRI)
(Alessio et al., 2013; Sidhu et al., 2016). Compensatory
brain activation can be observed in healthy areas, like the
contralateral hippocampus in reaction to hippocampal sclerosis
or extratemporal regions such as the cuneus or the
anterior cingulate cortex (Sidhu et al., 2016). The growing
attention of OHVR to the affective valence and personifications
of numbers could be part of a compensatory cognitive
strategy. It would be interesting to examine whether
synaesthesia occurs more often in epileptic patients as it
could be a way to explore its neural substrates.
Nevertheless, an alternative and speculative explanation
might be possible considering the strikingly preserved
amygdala volume in OHVR, despite the bilateral
loss of hippocampi. These major nodes for emotional processing
are bilaterally intact in OHVR. Amygdala and hippocampal
complex are the core nodes of two independent
memory systems, respectively emotional (such as fear) conditioning
and declarative memory. These systems tightly
interact when emotional stimuli are encountered and
when complex emotional memories are created or
retrieved (Phelps, 2004). The parietal cortex, essential for
the number processing (Dehaene, Piazza, Pinel, & Cohen,
2003), is also apparently preserved in OHVR (an apparently
normal volume, normal PET metabolism). Therefore, we
can hypothesise that there is some reorganisation and a
sort of overinvestment or dysregulation of such preserved
networks after bilateral hippocampal lesions to cope with
severe memory deficits. The implication of amygdala in
emotions and valence could suggest that a functional
network has been released from normal inhibition, reactivating
long forgotten childhood associations of numbers
with affective valence.


Conclusion

Our report suggests that the perirhinal region plays a critical
role in déjà vu. It also suggests that déjà vu can occur in
patients with severe memory impairment and massive hippocampal
damage. However, it does not entirely resolve
the issue of whether or not some relation between the
perirhinal region and the hippocampus is necessary for
déjà vu to occur as some reports suggest (Bartolomei
et al., 2012) or whether the hippocampus is involved in
déjà vu at all. OVHR experienced what she thought to be
two distinct phenomena, one related to déjà vu, the
second related to prescience and resembling déjà vécu,
which supports the idea that the two should be distinguished.
Whether these depend on the dysfunction of
different brain areas or are related to a continuum,
remains to be investigated. However, OHVR’s profile
highly suggests that hippocampal dysfunction is needed
for the emergence of feelings of prescience, and more
broadly for déjà vécu.

Developments in Information Technology and the Sexual Depression of Japanese Youth since 2000: The Otaku culture, online pornography

Developments in Information Technology and the Sexual Depression of Japanese Youth since 2000. Maki Hirayama. International Journal of the Sociology of Leisure, March 2019, Volume 2, Issue 1–2, pp 95–119. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41978-019-00034-2

Abstract: In Japan more young people became sexually inactive in 2000s, especially since around 2005.On the other hand, Internet and digital technology were spread in the same period. In this paper, five phases of Internet and digital technology are investigated to realize what happened to the sexuality of Japanese youth associated with the technology: e-mail and SNS, online pornography, fantasy world of Otaku leisure, dating sites and applications, sexual service industry. Online pornography of extreme contents and strong stimuli with completely male-centered vision overflew in the 2000s. With the influence, both men and women have got difficulties in having real sex. Animations and games to satisfy the romantic needs and libidos of the youth gained popularity in 2000s,to overwhelm real romance and sex. In the last part, the need of cross-cultural comparative studies on technology and sexuality is insisted.

Keywords: Internet Online pornography Otaku culture Japanese youth Sexual inactivation

Modern societies around the world are said to be in the midst of a permanent revolution in sex and intimacy (Weeks 2007). It would be valuable for sociology to accurately capture these revolutions, as they affect a wide range of social life, including leisure, human rights, and family life, as well as social sustainability by replenishing the population. These revolutions are influenced by the religion, history, family system, and economics of each society and differ significantly from each other (Hekma and Giami 2014). There are also areas in the world where we doubt revolutions really occur. However, sexuality has been studied and discussed mainly as a phenomenon of Western societies. Paying attention to relevant transformations in non-Western societies will give us a clearer overall picture of the revolution.
Since the 2000s, many societies in the world have experienced the Internet and digital revolution—the development and spread of this new technology. During this period, quantitative and qualitative changes in devices and services have been very fast and broad. Technology has dramatically changed communication, encounters, cognition, and imagination. Hence it has changed sex and romance in complicated and profound ways (Attwood 2018; Turkle 2012).
Internet technology expanded the possibilities of in-person sexual encounters or romantic relationships, and supported sex and intimate activities (Kon 2001). However, the Internet and digital technology has also dramatically expanded sexual imaginations by offering a new digital leisure activity, and it inhibits direct, unmediated sexual encounters and intimacy (Honda 2005). This is one of the contradictions of modern sexuality (Weeks 2007): Does the Internet and digital technology in the new millennium activate the leisure of direct sexual activity? Or does the technology cause people to withdraw from in-person sexual encounters and romance into a closed world of fantasy or delusion? The result is brought about by the complex interaction between the new technology and sexuality.
Along with the advances in Internet and digital technology, various forms of sexual depression have been reported one after another in Japan since around 2000. However, the details of how each form of sexual depression was related to a certain aspect of information technology have, thus far, not been sufficiently analyzed. In Japan, it is often said that people started having less sex after the spread of the Internet. However, there is no empirical proof of this yet.
In this paper, we will examine the interplay between sexuality and Internet or digital technology, and the consequences thereof. We will focus on young people, from teenagers to twentysomethings, who are highly exposed to and impacted by new information technologies. In this paper, information technologies refer to mobile services, SNS (social networking services), games, adult sites, matching sites, and applications, as well as various other devices, services, and applications. They all seem likely to be related to the reduction in sexual activity. We will draw the whole picture by reviewing previous research data on the use of mobile phones, SNS, games, adult sites, matching sites and applications, and relevant data on sexuality.1
In the first chapter, we will review the shifts in the sexual consciousness and behavior of Japanese youth and also describe the factors considered to affect the shifts other than information technology. In the following chapters, we will look back at the shifts concerning information technology since 2000 in Japan, in the five phases considered to be related to the change in sexual consciousness and behavior, and will try to determine how it relates to the change in sexuality. In the last part, we will hypothesize several factors other than those discussed earlier. After that, we will propose possible solutions to sexual depression that became serious in the development of information technologies. We will also point out some research topics to be addressed in the future regarding information technology and sexuality.

2.4 Online Pornography

A considerable part of Internet development involves pornographic media. As Spracklen (2015) points out, “masturbating to pornography is the biggest form of leisure associated with the Net.” The Japanese porn industry has thrived for more than 40 years. From carefully hiding pubic hair to exposing it, from heavily pixillating images of genitals to only lightly pixillating them, from simulated sex to real intercourse, pornography gradually became more explicit in the 1980s and 1990s in order to be more stimulating. The numbers of rental video stores dramatically increased until the early 1990s, and the market boomed, especially from 1998 to 2002 (Fujiki 2009). The size of the market at that time was said to be 300 billion yen per year (Nakamura 2015a), when porn videos were available for sale or rental and there was fierce competition. Starting around 1995, online pornography joined this market competition.

In the late 1990s, sample sites of porn films, offering clips from three to 15 min long, were established and had a significant impact on the market expansion of Internet porn (Ogiue 2011). Moreover, in 2000, portal sites opened that introduced many new porn films and were also linked to many sample sites, forming a huge porn network (Ogiue 2011, 153). This development in online porn changed porn viewing behavior greatly; it became a far more accessible, and thus more frequent, experience.¹³ Accurate survey data is not available, but unlike in Western countries, in Japan it is very rare for couples to watch pornography together; men mostly watch by themselves, in secret. This seems to be an important factor behind the rise of extreme content in Japanese porn and the decline in couples sex.

In the late 2000s, due to the development of free video-sharing services, paid porn films and amateur porn films were also posted online and made available free of charge. With more people browsing, free-adult-video culture was enhanced (Ogiue 2011).

The technical changes and fierce competition in free video distribution online transformed adult films in a number of ways. The length of each film became extremely short. Before 2000, there were long videos that could be called human documents, or philosophical works. After that, however, most of them became very short—about 5 min, only long enough so a man could ejaculate. The films no longer had plots or descriptions of the characters’ personalities and relationships. The quality of actresses improved. The porn actresses were generally regarded as being engaged in a shameful occupation, and to a considerable degree, they are still seen that way today. However, because the porn stars earned money and popularity, more young women willingly entered the industry. Scouts aggressively sought out new porn actresses. The genres became more segmented. These changes seem to have influenced males’ sexual preferences. Between 2002 and 2004, the contents of porn films changed rapidly to contain stronger stimuli (Ogiue 2011). During this period, there was hardly any social debate or criticism on pornography. Instead, the conservative forces of the Tokyo local government and the ruling party strongly criticized the detailed sex education at a certain school as “exceeding sex education” and cut back considerably on sex education.

The porn film producers introduced stronger stimuli for male users, and adult films adopted a stronger, male-centered viewpoint. In Japan, men overwhelmingly watch porn alone and seldom with a partner. Therefore, the film contents tend to adopt a single perspective, incorporating male values. Sexual violence such as rape (Weeks 2011) has become second nature in film scenarios. In the extreme films, the actresses react sexually while being raped; the actresses respond sexually to any objects, or even small living animals, inserted into their vaginas. Actresses just carry out the director’s instructions.¹⁴ Yet these depictions, which are far removed from the reality of a woman’s mind and body, give males serious misunderstandings about women’s sexuality. They create a firm belief in men’s minds that women are just tools (Spracklen 2015, 184). Zimbaldo and Coulombe state, “We think the negative effects of excessive, socially isolated porn use are worse for young people who have never had real-life sexual encounters,” because they come to regard sex as simply the mechanical movement of body parts (Zimbaldo & Coulombe 2015, 30). This observation is true of Japanese young people.

Moreover, there has been almost no social criticism of or education on adult films in Japan. Feminists have also ignored pornography and not criticized it. As many people watch pornography in secret, they hesitate to discuss it in public. Therefore, pornography has not become an issue in social discourse or academic research, and it remains a taboo subject.

It has been established that a significant number of actresses who have appeared in porn films were extorted. Young, naive women were deceived and forced into contracts. They were threatened with huge monetary penalties and appeared in the films unwillingly. Many were exposed to sexual violence and also suffered from the limitless spread of their porn pictures and films worldwide on the Internet. These serious human rights violations, and the damage to the minds and bodies of women, were finally recognized as a social problem in 2016 (Miyamoto 2016; Nakamura 2017). Setsuko Miyamoto, a member of “Group for the Awareness of Pornography Damage and Sexual Violence,” supported by about 200 women, stated: “Human philosophy has not caught up with the evolution of technology” (Nakamura 2017). International human rights organization Human Rights Now also addressed this problem (Human Rights Now 2016), and the government strengthened monitoring. Many organizers in this industry have been arrested. The situation in the porn industry has become in the danger of survival, but since anyone can download or upload porn films, even if the films on the Internet are evidence of human rights violations and a source of suffering of former actresses, no one can erase them.

Many men use these adult films as training for sex. In a JASE survey in 2011, 14.9% of male high school students and 40.7% of male university students responded that they learned about sex from adult films (JASE 2013). Men also unconsciously internalize the sensibilities and values of the porn films.¹⁵

Young men’s minds and bodies were transported into the world of porn films, whose contents became hard and violent to women in the 2000s, and this had significant effects on actual sex experiences. In adult films, women easily give men the pleasure they desire. But real women often show more reluctance to have sex, may feel pain, and may even say no. Most men do not know how to deal with this kind of reaction in real life. Most Japanese couples do not communicate enough about their desires. As a result, many men have concluded that they do not need real sex if they can watch pornography. Thus pornography has been supplanting real sex in Japan. Not a few women complain to advice websites that their male partners are watching pornography secretly, in their absence.

Introducing the research in the fields of physiology and psychology on how heavy usage of online pornography affects humans will clarify the mechanism of these phenomena. Zimbardo and Coulombe, using the term “enchantment of technology,” summarize the latest research results (Zimbardo and Coulombe 2015. Ch.11) The most powerful sexual organ, the brain, undergoes physiological change through excessive pornography usage. Some changes resemble those of drug addiction. Initially, the stimulation from porn causes dopamine to be secreted and causes erections. But as one’s brain becomes accustomed to the stimulation, the amount of dopamine decreases, requiring newer forms of stimulation.

As the shocking and exciting stimuli continue to be offered online, it can be difficult to notice the onset of sexual dysfunction. As time passes, erections cannot be maintained without the stimulation of porn, and reaching ejaculation becomes more difficult. Research by the Max Plank Institute for Human Development found that porn usage is also related to the reduction of gray matter in the area related to brain-reward sensitivity. As gray matter decreases, both dopamine and dopamine receptors are reduced. Thus it is thought that more and more stimulation is needed to achieve erection through sexual stimuli (Zimbardo and Coulombe 2015). We hope this ongoing research and new, related research will develop greatly and that the results will become public knowledge.

Next, we look at the consequences of online pornography for women. Pornography reduces women’s chance of experiencing pleasure. As I teach at a university, I often hear female students complaining that their boyfriends want to imitate porn films. They all say they experience pain because their boyfriends are too rough with them. Even if the young men refrain from imitating the extreme techniques of pornography, they do not understand women’s unique “sexual response cycle” (Balon and Segraves 2009). The women get no pleasure, and so they lose interest in having sex.

According to the nationwide survey (JFPA 2017), women’s interest in having sex was reported as follows (Fig. 5). For women aged 20–24, although the reason for the increase and decrease of the “not applicable” category is unknown, since 2008 the proportion of those “more or less interested” gradually decreased and that of those “not much interested + not interested at all” gradually increased. No detailed investigations of the change have been caried out yet. However, we hypothesize that the decline of women’s interest in having sex is related to men’s pornography use.

[Full text: link at the beginning.]