Try out PMC Labs and tell us what you think. Learn More. Full analysis for viewing behaviour in this study is included in the electronic supplementary material. Dilation of the pupils is an indicator of an observer's sexual interest in other people, but it remains unresolved whether this response is strengthened or diminished by sexually explicit material. To address this question, this study compared pupillary responses of heterosexual men and women to naked and dressed portraits of male and female adult film actors. Pupillary responses corresponded with observers' self-reported sexual orientation, such that dilation occurred during the viewing of opposite-sex people, but were comparable for naked and dressed targets.
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Either your web browser doesn't support Javascript or it is currently turned off. In the latter case, please turn on Javascript support in your web browser and reload this page. Full analysis for viewing behaviour in this study is included in the electronic supplementary material. Dilation of the pupils is an indicator of an observer's sexual interest in other people, but it remains unresolved whether this response is strengthened or diminished by sexually explicit material. To address this question, this study compared pupillary responses of heterosexual men and women to naked and dressed portraits of male and female adult film actors. Pupillary responses corresponded with observers' self-reported sexual orientation, such that dilation occurred during the viewing of opposite-sex people, but were comparable for naked and dressed targets. These findings indicate that pupillary responses provide a sex-specific measure, but are not sensitive to sexually explicit content. The presentation of male and female adults elicits dilation in observers' pupils to the people category that matches their sexual interest. This effect is observed with a variety of stimuli, ranging from static images of partially dressed adults [ 1 — 3 ] to photographs of nudes [ 3 — 5 ], and sexually explicit video [ 6 , 7 ]. High sexual explicitness is necessary for eliciting a response pattern that reveals observers' sexual preferences with other physiological approaches, such as phallometric measures [ 8 , 9 ].
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This study investigates the spatiotemporal dynamics associated with conscious and non-conscious processing of naked and dressed human bodies. To this effect, stimuli of naked men and women with visible primary sexual characteristics, as well as dressed bodies, were presented to 20 heterosexual male and female participants while acquiring high resolution EEG data. The stimuli were either consciously detectable supraliminal presentations or were rendered non-conscious through backward masking subliminal presentations. The N1 event-related potential component was significantly enhanced in participants when they viewed naked compared to dressed bodies under supraliminal viewing conditions. More importantly, naked bodies of the opposite sex produced a significantly greater N1 component compared to dressed bodies during subliminal presentations, when participants were not aware of the stimulus presented.
Modesty , sometimes known as demureness , is a mode of dress and deportment which intends to avoid the encouraging of sexual attraction in others. The word "modesty" comes from the Latin word modestus which means "keeping within measure". In this use, it may be considered inappropriate or immodest to reveal certain parts of the body. In some societies, modesty may involve women covering their bodies completely and not talking to men who are not immediate family members; in others, a fairly revealing but one-piece bathing costume is considered modest while other women wear bikinis. In some countries, exposure of the body in breach of community standards of modesty is also considered to be public indecency, and public nudity is generally illegal in most of the world and regarded as indecent exposure. For example, Stephen Gough , a lone man attempting to walk naked from south to north in the United Kingdom , was repeatedly imprisoned. In semi-public contexts standards of modesty vary. Nudity may be acceptable in public single-sex changing rooms at swimming baths , for example, or for mass medical examination of people for military service.
