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      Flirting With or Through Media: How the Communication Partners’ Ontological Class and Sexual Priming Affect Heterosexual Males’ Interest in Flirtatious Messages and Their Perception of the Source

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          Abstract

          Because technologies are frequently used for sexual gratification it seems plausible that artificial communication partners, such as voice assistants, could be used to fulfill sexual needs. While the idea of sexualized interaction with voice assistants has been portrayed in movies (e.g., “Her”), there is a lack of empirical research on the effect of the ontological class (human versus artificial) on the voice’s potential to evoke interest in a sexualized interaction and its perception in terms of sexual attractiveness. The Sexual Interaction Illusion Model (SIIM), which emphasizes influences on sensations evoked by artificial interaction partners, furthermore suggests that there may be contextual influences, especially sexual arousal, that may be crucial for the question of engaging in a sexualized interaction with an artificial entity. To empirically investigate whether the ontological class of the speaker (computer-mediated human in comparison to voice assistants) and the level of sexual arousal affects the heterosexual males’ interest in hearing more flirtatious messages and the perception of the communication partner’s sexual attractiveness, an online experiment with between subject design was conducted. Two hundred and fifty seven respondents were confronted with at least four, and voluntarily six messages from either a computer-mediated human or a flirtatious voice assistant, in interaction with being previously primed sexually or neutrally. The results demonstrated that the effect of sexual arousal was not prevailing on the interest in further messages and the attractiveness perception of the interaction partners, while the ontological class did so. Here, the voice assistant evoked more interest in further messages and the technology itself, while the computer mediated human was perceived to be more sexually attractive and flirtatious, and evoked more social presence. The communication partners social presence was shown to be the predictor with most explanatory power for the interaction partners perceived sexual attractiveness, regardless of whether it was human or artificial. The results underline differences between artificial and human interaction partners, but also underline that especially social presence and the feeling that the user is addressed (in terms of flirtatiousness) is crucial in digitalized intimacy regardless of the ontological class.

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              Agreement of Self-Reported and Genital Measures of Sexual Arousal in Men and Women: A Meta-Analysis

              The assessment of sexual arousal in men and women informs theoretical studies of human sexuality and provides a method to assess and evaluate the treatment of sexual dysfunctions and paraphilias. Understanding measures of arousal is, therefore, paramount to further theoretical and practical advances in the study of human sexuality. In this meta-analysis, we review research to quantify the extent of agreement between self-reported and genital measures of sexual arousal, to determine if there is a gender difference in this agreement, and to identify theoretical and methodological moderators of subjective-genital agreement. We identified 132 peer- or academically-reviewed laboratory studies published between 1969 and 2007 reporting a correlation between self-reported and genital measures of sexual arousal, with total sample sizes of 2,505 women and 1,918 men. There was a statistically significant gender difference in the agreement between self-reported and genital measures, with men (r = .66) showing a greater degree of agreement than women (r = .26). Two methodological moderators of the gender difference in subjective-genital agreement were identified: stimulus variability and timing of the assessment of self-reported sexual arousal. The results have implications for assessment of sexual arousal, the nature of gender differences in sexual arousal, and models of sexual response.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                Front Psychol
                Front Psychol
                Front. Psychol.
                Frontiers in Psychology
                Frontiers Media S.A.
                1664-1078
                22 February 2022
                2022
                : 13
                : 719008
                Affiliations
                Social Psychology: Media and Communication, University of Duisburg-Essen , Duisburg, Germany
                Author notes

                Edited by: Nicola Döring, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany

                Reviewed by: James Pfaus, Universidad Veracruzana, Mexico; Rohangis Mohseni, Technische Universität Ilmenau, Germany

                *Correspondence: Jessica M. Szczuka, jessica.szczuka@ 123456uni-due.de

                This article was submitted to Human-Media Interaction, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology

                Article
                10.3389/fpsyg.2022.719008
                8902147
                4b1d6563-826f-4a1c-a91d-096d557d34b8
                Copyright © 2022 Szczuka.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

                History
                : 01 June 2021
                : 14 January 2022
                Page count
                Figures: 1, Tables: 4, Equations: 0, References: 72, Pages: 18, Words: 15932
                Categories
                Psychology
                Original Research

                Clinical Psychology & Psychiatry
                digitalized sexuality,digitalized intimacy,voice assistants,computer-mediated communication,sexual arousal,human–computer interaction

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