title: Intercourse orgasm consistency, concordance of women's genital and subjective sexual arousal, and erotic stimulus presentation sequence.
abstract: Many studies report discordance between women's genital (vaginal pulse amplitude) and subjective sexual arousal responses to erotica. Consistent with our previous research, I hypothesized that the association between physiological and subjective domains would be greater for women with greater orgasmic consistency (OC) during penile-vaginal intercourse but not for OC during masturbation or noncoital partnered sexual activities. I confirmed this specific hypothesis in a sample of young Dutch women (N = 27, mean age 20, all with current partners), replicating our earlier psychophysiological findings with postmenopausal women. Also replicated were the findings that intercourse OC (40% of the women had an orgasm from 90-100% of intercourse events, 44% from 9-89% of intercourse events) was not less than for other sexual activity and that OC during intercourse was uncorrelated with OC during masturbation. We observed the association of intercourse consistency with genital-subjective concordance when visual erotica was presented in a sequence of increasing intensity (analogous to typical real sexual encounters) but not when presented in decreasing, random, or fixed-intensity sequence. I discuss the results in terms of the unique nature of penile-vaginal intercourse and the study's implications for sex therapy and sex research.
authors.affiliation: Division of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Paisley, Paisley, United Kingdom. stuartbrody@hotmail.com
authors.forename: Stuart
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Brody
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001143:Arousal / Q000502:physiology*; D003075:Coitus / Q000502:physiology*; D004882:Erotica; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008418:Masturbation; D009948:Orgasm / Q000502:physiology*; D011594:Psychometrics; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014621:Vagina / Q000098:blood supply