What makes neat freaks and germaphobes less picky in the heat of passion? New research says sexual arousal may play a part in curbing our ick! and ew! reactions.
WEDNESDAY, Sept. 12, 2012 – A woman's tolerance for gross things — like dirty underwear and used tissues — is much higher if she's headed to the bedroom, says a new study.
"Saliva, sweat, semen, and body odors are among the strongest disgust elicitors," writes Charmaine Borg, the author of the paper about how sexual arousal curbs women's disgust reaction. "This results in the intriguing question of how people succeed in having pleasurable sex at all."
Borg, a doctoral student in experimental clinical psychology at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and her team recruited young, heterosexual women for the study to find out.
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Participants were divided into three groups — sexual arousal, non-sexual positive arousal and neutral — and shown a film specific to their group. The sexual arousal group viewed a steamy scene from a female-friendly pornographic film. The non-sexual positive arousal group was subjected to high-octane footage of sky-diving or mountain climbing, which stimulated them by encouraging a strong adrenaline response but in an nonsexual way. The neutral group watched a film of a train traveling amid a bucolic landscape.
Next, each participant was asked to perform 16 tasks that included sipping juice from a cup that contained a large (fake) bug, lubricating a vibrator by hand, eating a biscuit that sat next to a worm, touching "used" condoms, and holding a bandage that was used on a wound. Others were more disgusting.
The subjects were asked to rate the ick factor for each of the 16 stimuli.
The sexually aroused subjects — those who'd watched the erotic film — were least disgusted by the sexually suggestive tasks and, in general, were less disgusted by the other tasks asked of them. They were also considerably more willing to carry out the tasks than the other groups.
"What we can say with confidence is sexual arousal decreases disgust," says Borg.
The revelation comes of little surprise to Claire Cavanah, co-owner of Babeland, a sex-toy business in New York City. Cavanah, 47, says customers frequently wander in to buy sex toys and other sex accoutrements, and sometimes remark that they wish sex wasn't so messy. She tells those customers to get used to it. "Icky things and sex are never to be torn asunder."
As a sex-toy trader, she's observed that something disgusting can also be a turn on. For example, studies have found that the aroma of sweaty T-shirts can release armpit pheromones that turn women on.
"When you're in bed with someone you love and want and desire and find arousing, that which is otherwise disgusting makes that person urgently more attractive," says Cavanah.
However, Borg says her research is not purely to demonstrate that women react more strongly to gross things, but rather to build on her research into what causes sexual dysfunction in women. She suggests that women who experience pain or discomfort or are unable to have sexual intercourse may actually have an adverse reaction when they become aroused, a "disgust response to erotic stimulation," she says.