An Evolutionary Psychology Perspective on Porn Stars

Although a great body of psychological research has examined pornography, there has been a paucity of studies focusing on performers in this profession. A recent paper (Griffith, Mitchell, Hart, Adams, & Gu, 2012) testing whether or not female pornography actresses are in fact “damaged goods” has attracted widespread attention. Two other papers have been published by the same lead author, one discussing what motivates women to work in pornography (Griffith, Adams, Hart, & Mitchell, 2012)  and the other looking at male performers (Griffith, Mitchell, Hammond, Gu, & Hart, 2012). The findings confirm some but disconfirm other popular stereotypes about porn actors and actresses. The studies also raise a number of interesting questions. Evolutionary psychology theories about variations in human sexual behaviour might shed light on the particular motivations of porn stars. For example, one intriguing prediction based on evolutionary psychology is that female pornography actresses might have more sons than daughters compared to other women. This hypothesis remains to be tested. 

Jenna Jameson, considered the world's most famous porn actress. © Glenn Francis,www.PacificProDigital.com 

Past research into performers in the porn industry has run into difficulty because of this population to talk to the researchers. The industry apparently tends to be a rather closed and secretive world and actors tend to keep to themselves, perhaps due to the social stigma attached to their work. Sharon Mitchell, a coauthor of the recent papers on this topic, actually works in the industry and also founded a medical foundation that provides STD testing for pornography performers. Participants in these studies were therefore recruited through a clinic that provides such testing.  

The findings of the “damaged goods” paper have been summarised in detail elsewhere, for example, in this post. To recap briefly, contrary to the stereotypical view of pornography actresses as women psychologically damaged by an abusive upbringing, the study found that these women were no more likely to have been sexually abused as children than women in a matched control group drawn from the general population. Additionally, among other findings, pornography actresses reported higher self-esteem, and sexual satisfaction than other women. Similar results were found for male actors compared to men in a control group, contrary to stereotypes of these men as teenage runaways escaping abusive homes (Griffith, Mitchell, Hammond, et al., 2012). In regards, to the performers’ sexuality, the results are probably more in accord with popular stereotypes. Both male and female performers reported having their first sexual experience at a younger age than other people and reported having had a far larger number of sexual partners. Note that when answering this last question, participants were asked NOT to include people they had had sex with only as part of their work, so these are sexual partners from their private lives. In fact, when asked to indicate the number of sexual partners in the last 12 months, the average number for porn actresses was larger than the average number of partners that ordinary women had had in a lifetime. Interestingly, the average number of lifetime partners reported by male actors (about 170) was notably larger than that for actresses (about 75). Perhaps future studies will shed some light on why there is such a large difference. Both figures are much larger than the averages for men (about 10) and for women (about 5) in the control groups though.

Sharon Mitchell co-authored recent papers on the porn industry

Also of note was that both male and female performers indicated that they enjoyed sex more on average compared to their control groups. For example, on a 10-point scale, porn actresses rated their enjoyment of sex on average as 9.40 compared to other women with an average score of 8.28. This may not seem like a huge difference at first, but the researchers noted that 69% of porn actresses rated their enjoyment as 10 out of 10, compared to 33% of other women. Additionally, less than 2% of actresses rated their enjoyment as 5 or less, compared to about 12% in the control group. Among the men, 83% of porn actors rated their enjoyment of sex as 10 out 10, compared to 51% of the control group males. Only one of the male actors in the study rated his enjoyment as less than 5, compared to about 8% of the control group.  

One striking difference between male and female performers was in sexual orientation. The vast majority of male actors identified as heterosexual, with only 8 bisexual and 2 homosexual (out of 105 participants), similar to the control group. In contrast, among the actresses, over 67% identified as bisexual, and the remainder were heterosexual except for one lesbian. (Among the control group women, over 92% identified as heterosexual, about 7% as bisexual, and the remainder as lesbian.)

What seems very clear from these studies is that both male and female performers have unusually high levels of sexual desire and a willingness to have sexual relations with a large number of partners. In psychology, a person’s willingness and desire to have uncommitted sexual relations is known as sociosexuality. (Lay people might simply use the word promiscuity.) Sociosexuality has been of considerable interest to evolutionary psychologists who are interested in understanding the diversity of human mating strategies. Porn stars would appear to be at the extreme end of the scale in sociosexuality. There is evidence that sociosexuality is to an extent heritable and evolutionary psychologists have argued that it represents part of an evolved mating strategy (Gangestad & Simpson, 1990).

Evolutionary psychologists have argued that humans have developed a number of different mating strategies to ensure their reproductive success. People with a restricted strategy require considerable commitment to and investment in a relationship from a partner before they will engage in sexual relations. People with a more unrestricted strategy require much less commitment or investment and may be willing to enter quickly into sexual relations with a new partner. In the general population, men are usually higher than women in sociosexual tendencies, so the fact that female porn actresses appear to have such high sex drives is even more unusual. From an evolutionary perspective it has often been thought that men tend to be less sexually restricted than women because they invest less in reproduction and have the potential ability to impregnate many partners. Women on the other hand invest heavily in reproduction and can only have one pregnancy at a time. Therefore, they might be expected to be more selective than men in regard to who they have sexual relations with. But if this is the case, how to explain the fact that some women have a relatively unrestricted sociosexual orientation, while some men are highly faithful to their partners?

In order to explain this, evolutionary psychologists have developed more sophisticated theories that acknowledge that each sex may choose from more than one kind of mating strategy. In particular, individuals of either sex may tend to specialise in a particular mating strategy.[1] Women with a restricted sociosexual orientation will prefer partners who demonstrate their willingness to invest time and resources into the relationship and provide for her children. Women with an unrestricted orientation seek partners who show signs of high quality genes associated with reproductive success, in order to pass these genes onto their children. That is, they will seek to mate with men who are highly physically attractive and/or have high social status. These kinds of men in their turn will find unrestricted women preferable to more restricted women who demand more relationship exclusivity, as they seek to mate with as many women as possible. Less exciting but more reliable men who have much less chance of being successful in mating with many partners will for their part find it more profitable to appeal to more restricted women and therefore be more willing to commit to long-term relationships.[2] These two broad kinds of strategies will tend to maintain a balance with each other over time because people who specialise in one kind of strategy tend to compete most intensely with each other for mates. Thus, for example if most women in a population pursue a restricted strategy they will be in very intense competition with each other for men willing to commit to them. In this situation, the minority of unrestricted women will have a competitive advantage and will become highly sought after by attractive males. On the other hand, if the unrestricted orientation becomes too common, these women will experience more competition with each other.

Jesse Jane states "I've always been an extremely sexual person and I knew I would like to do videos." 

© Glenn Francis,www.PacificProDigital.com 

One prediction made by this theory is that women with an unrestricted orientation will tend to produce more sons than daughters (Gangestad & Simpson, 1990). Their sons are more likely than daughters to benefit from inheriting the characteristics that made their fathers reproductively successful. This is because males tend to have greater variability than women in their reproductive success. That is, some men will have many more children than others, whereas the number of children women can have is in a narrower range. Women with a more restrictive orientation on the other hand will benefit from having more daughters. This is because these women are less likely to mate with highly reproductively successful males (after all, men who commit to a single woman forego mating opportunities and in that sense reduce their success) and their sons will therefore be less likely to be highly attractive, highly sought after men.  

Gangestad and Simpson actually tested this theory and found that women who rated themselves as more sociosexually unrestricted did tend to have more sons than daughters compared to more restricted women. These tended to be small effects, which is understandable considering that random factors beyond the mother’s control substantially influence the child’s sex. However, based on their estimates they claimed that individuals with an extremely unrestricted orientation (for the stats minded, two standard deviations above the mean) would be expected to produce about 50% more sons than individuals at the other extreme of restrictedness (that is, two standard deviations below the mean).

Based on the foregoing, it might be concluded that porn performers are for the most part people who have inherited tendencies to extreme sociosexuality and that the payoff from an evolutionary perspective is that the men get to mate with many women and that the women get to mate with highly reproductively successful men and therefore have the opportunity to pass these men’s genes onto their sons. As far as I know, no studies have surveyed whether female porn stars have more sons than daughters compared to other women, but if Gangestad and Simpson’s theory is correct we would expect there to be a noticeable difference.

At this point, one might object that the idea that women can influence what sex their children are seems rather silly, as the child’s sex is determined by chromosomes on the father’s sperm. Fortunately, for our theory so far, research has found evidence that some women actually do seem to influence the sex of their children to an extent. Studies have found for example that women high on the personality trait of interpersonal dominance tend to have more sons than daughters compared to less dominant women (Grant, 1992; Grant & France, 2001). Dominance in women is associated with heightened testosterone levels, and there is evidence that maternal testosterone levels (in humans as well as other mammals) can influence the child’s sex in favour of conceiving a male (Grant, 2007). (Many lay people are surprised to learn that women’s bodies produce testosterone at all, but this is actually perfectly normal for women. Where men differ from women is that their testosterone levels are many times higher.)   

Furthermore to this, interpersonal dominance in both men and women is associated with having more sexual partners (Markey & Markey, 2007). Therefore, I would predict that female porn actresses are probably not only higher in sociosexuality, but also more interpersonally dominant compared to other women and have higher testosterone levels. Heightened levels of testosterone during foetal development have also been linked to bisexuality in females. Additionally, bisexual women tend to be higher in sociosexuality compared to heterosexual women and lesbians (Schmitt, 2007). Female porn stars were found to predominantly identify as bisexual, although it was not clear in the study if they considered themselves bisexual mainly due to the requirements of their work in the pornography industry, or if they had always considered themselves this way. There does seem to be a pattern emerging here that might suggest that high testosterone levels may be a key feature that underlies a number of characteristics that may be common in female porn actresses. Only further research will determine whether these conjectures are accurate.

This article has previously appeared on my blog Unique - Like Everybody Else at Psychology Today. 

Further reading:

The Personalities of Porn Stars (a follow-up to the present article)

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© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided. 

References

Gangestad, S. W., & Simpson, J. A. (1990). Toward an Evolutionary History of Female Sociosexual Variation. Journal of Personality, 58(1), 69-96. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-6494.1990.tb00908.x

Grant, V. J. (1992). The measurement of dominance in pregnant women by use of the simple adjective test. Personality and Individual Differences, 13(1), 99-102. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0191-8869(92)90225-E

Grant, V. J. (2007). Could maternal testosterone levels govern mammalian sex ratio deviations? Journal of Theoretical Biology, 246(4), 708-719. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jtbi.2007.02.005

Grant, V. J., & France, J. T. (2001). Dominance and testosterone in women. Biological Psychology, 58(1), 41-47. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0301-0511(01)00100-4

Griffith, J. D., Adams, L. T., Hart, C. L., & Mitchell, S. (2012). Why Become a Pornography Actress? International Journal of Sexual Health, 24(3), 165-180. doi: 10.1080/19317611.2012.666514

Griffith, J., Mitchell, S., Hammond, B., Gu, L., & Hart, C. (2012). A Comparison of Sexual Behaviors and Attitudes, Self-Esteem, Quality of Life, and Drug Use Among Pornography Actors and a Matched Sample International Journal of Sexual Health, 24 (4), 254-266 DOI: 10.1080/19317611.2012.710183

Griffith JD, Mitchell S, Hart CL, Adams LT, & Gu LL (2012). Pornography Actresses: An Assessment of the Damaged Goods Hypothesis. Journal of sex research PMID: 23167939

Markey, P. M., & Markey, C. N. (2007). The interpersonal meaning of sexual promiscuity. Journal of Research in Personality, 41(6), 1199-1212. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.02.004

Schmitt, D. P. (2007). Sexual Strategies Across Sexual Orientations. Journal of Psychology & Human Sexuality, 18(2-3), 183-214. doi: 10.1300/J056v18n02_06

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[1] It should be acknowledged that the same individual may alternate between different sexual strategies at different times in his or her life. However, in order to keep things clearer I will focus here on stable strategies a person may specialise in.

[2] In the evolutionary psychology literature, men of the unrestricted type are referred to as ‘cads’ while men of the restricted type are referred to as ‘dads’. Apparently there is a third category of men who combine high physical attractiveness with high willingness to commit to family life who are known as ‘brads’ after Brad Pitt. These men are thought to be quite rare though sadly. 

Spirituality through Psychedelic Drugs

Psychedelic drugs, including LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline, have long had an association with spiritual pursuits. For example, psychedelic plants, such as psilocybe mushrooms, peyote, and ayahuasca have long been used in shamanic traditions in the Americas (Lerner & Lyvers, 2006). Recent research has found that administering psychedelic drugs in a supportive setting can occasion profound mystical experiences. For example, a recent study found that about 60% volunteers in an experiment on the effects of psilocybin, who had never before used psychedelic drugs, had a “complete mystical experience” characterised by experiences such as unity with all things, transcendence of time and space, a sense of insight into the ultimate nature of reality, and feelings of ineffability, awe, and profound positive emotions such as joy, peace, and love (Griffiths, Richards, McCann, & Jesse, 2006).

Image courtesy of dan at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Due to the association between psychedelic drugs and mystical experiences, some recent research has looked at how the spiritual belief and attitudes of psychedelic drug users compare to users of non-psychedelic drugs and to non-drug users. A study by Lerner and Lyvers (2006) compared people who used high doses of classic psychedelic drugs (e.g. LSD, mescaline and psilocybin) with people who used other illegal drugs (mostly marijuana and amphetamines) who had never tried psychedelic drugs, and people who had never used illegal drugs. (Only high-dose psychedelic drug users were included, as high doses are required to induce mystical states. Low dose usage is popular with people who primarily enjoy the perceptual effects such as enhancement of music during raves.) Psychedelic drug users endorsed more mystical beliefs (such as in a universal soul, no fear of death, unity of all things, existence of a transcendent reality, and oneness with God, nature and the universe). Psychedelic drug users also said they placed greater value on spirituality and concern for others, and less value on financial prosperity, than the other two groups. This accords with findings from another study (Móró, Simon, Bárd, & Rácz, 2011) that found that psychedelic drug users regarded spirituality as more personally important compared to users of other drugs and non-drug users. Spirituality in this latter study was defined as “one’s relationship to God, or whatever you perceive to be Ultimate Transcendence.”

These findings do suggest that people who use psychedelic drugs consider themselves more spiritual, and perhaps less materialistic, than people who prefer other drugs or who do not use illegal drugs at all. A more difficult question to answer is whether taking psychedelic drugs induces people to become more open to spiritual beliefs and values, or whether people who already have these beliefs and values are more inclined than others to use these drugs. Lerner and Lyvers suggest that the answer is probably a combination of both as persons on a spiritual quest are more likely to take these drugs and their subsequent experiences may strengthen and deepen their spiritual values and beliefs.

There does seem to be evidence that there may be a two-way relationship between psychedelic drug use and having spiritual and mystical beliefs. A study on psilocybin by Griffiths et al. (2011) found that people who had never used psychedelic drugs before reported long-term (assessed over a period of 14 months) increases in “death transcendence”. That is, participants expressed an increased belief that there is continuity after death, e.g. belief that death is not an ending but a transition to something even greater than this life. One of the core features of mystical experience is “an intuitive belief that the experience

is a source of objective truth about the nature of reality” (MacLean, Johnson, & Griffiths, 2011). As noted earlier, about 60% of volunteers in the Griffiths et al. study reported a complete mystical experience, which they regarded as having sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance months later. From this it seems reasonable to think that one of the outcomes of the mystical experience was to convince volunteers that consciousness does continue after death. Additionally, as noted in a previous post, volunteers who experienced a complete mystical experience on psilocybin had a subsequent increase in the personality domain of openness to experience. People high in openness to experience also tend to endorse more mystical and spiritual beliefs, although they may also endorse less conventional religious belief.

On the other hand, a person’s motives for taking psychedelic drugs in the first place are most probably related to their pre-existing beliefs and values. There is a subculture of people called “psychonauts” who are interested in taking psychedelic drugs for purposes of self-exploration, which can include religious and spiritual motives. Móró et al. referred to such purposes as autognosis (self-knowledge) and found that autognosis was one of the main motives for using psychedelic drugs and for preferring them to other drugs. Furthermore, as noted elsewhere, people who are high in a personality trait known as absorption (a tendency to “lose oneself” when focused on something of particular interest, within or without oneself) have a much stronger response to psychedelic drugs and are more likely to have a mystical experience compared to people low in capacity for absorption. This would seem to indicate that some people are more likely than others to “benefit” from psychedelic drugs, in terms of having a profound spiritual experience. Hence, people with certain personality traits as well as the desire for autognosis are probably more predisposed than others to seek some sort of spiritual awakening through psychedelic drugs. 

Having considered that psychedelic drugs may be conducive to mystical and spiritual beliefs and experiences, it may be worth considering what benefits psychedelic drug use might have. Griffiths et al. (2008) found that fourteen months after taking psilocybin for the first time nearly two-thirds of volunteers rated the experience as in the top five for both most personally meaningful and most spiritually significant experience in their entire lives. About 64% said the experience had increased their personal well-being and life satisfaction over the fourteen month period. Having a mystical experience while on psilocybin appeared to play a central role in these high ratings of personal meaning and spiritual significance. Additionally, volunteers said that they experienced positive changes in their attitudes towards life and to the self, as well as increased positive mood and a sense of greater altruism (Griffiths, et al., 2006). These self-ratings were confirmed by people who knew the volunteers well. The finding of increased altruism seems to concur with the finding by Lerner and Lyvers that psychedelic drug users reported greater concern for others compared to users of other drugs and non-drug users. Additionally, a study I discussed elsewhere suggested that psilocybin could reduce anxiety and depression in people with terminal cancer. 

On the other hand, it might be tempting to expect too much from psychedelic drugs. Lerner and Lyvers noted that they were expecting that psychedelic drug users might cope better with stress than non-drug users because they believed that mystical and spiritual experiences would act as a buffer against stressful events. On the contrary they found that psychedelic drug users did not differ from non-drug users in their self-reported ability to cope with stress. Interestingly, both of these groups did report better coping than users of other drugs. This seems to suggest that users of non-psychedelic drugs do not cope well with stress, and this may well be a factor in their drug use. Móró et al. also found that psychedelic drug users did not differ from others (including users of other drugs as well as non-drug users in this study) in their apparent ability to cope with stress or in their sense of having a purpose in life. Additionally, I think it worth noting that Móró et al. found that their spirituality measure had only quite weak positive correlations with coping ability and purpose in life. This seems to suggest that one’s spirituality (i.e. one’s relationship to God or “ultimate transcendence”) may make little practical difference to one’s ability to cope with daily life or to conceive a sense of purpose in one’s life. I am inclined to speculate that mystical and spiritual beliefs might be of particular benefit when dealing with ultimate concerns such as dying, but may have considerably less practical value when dealing with more mundane concerns or even in relation to deciding one’s life direction. More research may help to make these issues clearer.

Additionally, Lerner and Lyvers were somewhat surprised to find that psychedelic drug users did not differ from the other groups in the value they placed on humility. Mystical experiences tend to be associated with a sense of self-transcendence that the authors initially thought might induce people to feel more humble about their place in the greater scheme of things and to attach less importance to their own ego. However, this notion is debatable. Sceptical writer John Horgan considers that in some people mystical experiences could actually inflate their egos leading to grandiose beliefs about their superiority to others. That is, a person having a mystical experience might come away convinced that they are a prophet or a guru, or otherwise feel that they are more “enlightened” than other people.  

One final note of caution I want to make is of a more philosophical nature. I think psychedelic drugs have great potential value, both as therapeutic tools and in research about the nature of the mind and consciousness. Mystical experiences induced by these drugs appear to have quite profound personal significance for those who experience them. One of the apparent features of the psychedelic mystical experience is that people experience, at least temporarily, a sense that deep truths about the nature of objective reality are being revealed to them. After the psychedelic trip ends some people might come away convinced that these experiences are genuine indicators of something real, whereas others may conclude that the experiences are an illusion. I don’t think research has clarified the proportion of people who find these “insights” convincing” compared to those who have doubts, so I think this is worth further study.[1] My own belief is that while such experiences may indeed be wonderful and worthwhile, they do not provide valid evidence about the nature of reality. I agree with Sam Harris who has stated that we need to make a distinction between describing the nature of the psychedelic experience and making claims about the nature of reality. He says we should be very slow to extrapolate from what one experiences in the darkness of one’s closed eyes to what is true of the universe. He goes on to say that we need to be interested in the full spectrum of human experience and to be able to speak about it rationally without engaging in pseudoscience. Perhaps, future research might consider what benefits psychedelic drugs might have for people who are open to the full psychedelic experience, yet willing to remain sceptical about their ability to reveal “ultimate truths”.

 This article has previously appeared on Psychology Today on my blog Unique - Like Everybody Else.

Follow me on Facebook, Google Plus, or Twitter.

© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided.  

Other posts about psychedelic drugs and/or spirituality

Psilocybin and personality

Psilocybin and brain function

Psilocybin for anxiety and depression in cancer

DMT, aliens and reality – part 1

DMT, aliens and reality – part 2

DMT: Gateway to Reality, Fantasy or What?

Troubled Souls: Spirituality as a Mental Health Hazard

Peak Experiences in Psilocybin Users 

 

References

Griffiths, R., Johnson, M., Richards, W., Richards, B., McCann, U., & Jesse, R. (2011). Psilocybin occasioned mystical-type experiences: immediate and persisting dose-related effects. Psychopharmacology, 218(4), 649-665. doi: 10.1007/s00213-011-2358-5

Griffiths, R., Richards, W., Johnson, M., McCann, U., & Jesse, R. (2008). Mystical-type experiences occasioned by psilocybin mediate the attribution of personal meaning and spiritual significance 14 months later. Journal of Psychopharmacology, 22(6), 621.

Griffiths, R. R., Richards, W. A., McCann, U., & Jesse, R. (2006). Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology, 187(3), 268-283. doi: 10.1007/s00213-006-0457-5

Lerner M, & Lyvers M (2006). Values and beliefs of psychedelic drug users: a cross-cultural study. Journal of psychoactive drugs, 38 (2), 143-7 PMID: 16903453

MacLean, K. A., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R. (2011). Mystical Experiences Occasioned by the Hallucinogen Psilocybin Lead to Increases in the Personality Domain of Openness. Journal of Psychopharmacology. doi: 10.1177/0269881111420188

Móró L, Simon K, Bárd I, & Rácz J (2011). Voice of the psychonauts: coping, life purpose, and spirituality in psychedelic drug users. Journal of psychoactive drugs, 43 (3), 188-98 PMID: 22111402

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[1] In a previous article I noted that many users of the drug DMT experience striking visions of non-human entities, and that some users were left convinced that these were somehow objectively real. 

Sex and religion: natural enemies?

Loving thoughts might increase religious belief, and sexy thoughts decrease it.

An interesting research study (Förster, Epstude, & Özelsel, 2009) found that asking people to think about sex subsequently improved their performance on analytical tasks requiring attention to detail. Getting them to think about love improved their performance on creative tasks. The underlying theory is that people think about sex in concrete and specific ways involving the present moment which facilitates analytical thinking. On the other hand, people tend to think of love in a more abstract and global way that involves thoughts about the long-term future, which facilitates creativity. Previous studies have found that priming tasks that activate analytical thinking tend to weaken religious beliefs. This raises the intriguing possibility that thinking about sex could weaken religious belief, whereas thoughts about love might strengthen it. If this is true, this might shed some light on why most religions take such a negative view of sex, especially lust without love. 

Is love divine, and lust demonic? (image credit: Scot A Harvest)

This study was based on the theory that there are two main ways that people can process information: attending to broad global features of the big picture or focusing on concrete specific details, that is, “the forest or the trees.” Global, abstract processing may lead to more remote and diverse associations which are beneficial to creativity (thinking “outside the box”) whereas more narrowly focused thinking may help one remember well-earned logical rules that are relevant to analytical thinking. Furthermore, research suggests that thinking about the long-term future tends to activate global and holistic processing because people know few details about the future, and therefore tend to think about it in abstract way. On the other hand, thinking about the present moment tends to activate local and detail oriented processing as people think about the present in a more concrete manner.

The authors argued that thoughts of romantic love tends to activate a global processing style, because love usually involves a desire for a long-lasting attachment (“together forever”) whereas sexual desires are usually more concrete and specific and generally focus on immediate gratification rather than long-term planning. The authors tested this theory by two experiments. In both experiments, participants were primed either with love, sex, or a neutral topic. In the first experiment, participants were asked to either imagine going for a long walk with someone they loved and to think about how much they loved him or her; or to imagine having casual sex with someone they found attractive but did not love. A control group were asked to imagine taking a walk by themselves. The second experiment used subliminal exposure to words related to either love, sex, or neutral topics. This was followed by a task to test creative thinking, and then a task to test analytical thinking. One of the creative tasks, for example, involved solving a series of problems where the solution was not obvious and where the answer typically occurred to a person in a ‘flash of insight’ after prolonged thought. The analytical tasks involved solving logical reasoning problems. Results showed that participants who had thought about love performed better on the creativity tasks compared to those who thought about sex and the control group. Additionally, those who had thought about sex performed better on the analytical task compared to those had thought about love and the control group. Thinking about sex seemed to be actually detrimental to creativity, as this group actually performed worse on this task compared to the control group. Similarly, thinking about love was detrimental to analytical thinking, as this group also performed worse than the control group on the logic task. Perhaps this indicates that when people are thinking about sex they become too single-minded to be creative, whereas those in love are too dreamy to think logically.

The results of the second experiment also found that subliminal exposure to words related to sex induced more local processing in a perception task, whereas subliminal exposure to words related to love induced more global processing. These results suggested that the effect of sex-priming on analytical thinking was actually mediated by increased attention to local processing, whereas the effect of love-priming on creativity was mediated by increased attention to global processing.

These results led me to wonder about possible influences of thinking about love and sex respectively on religious beliefs. As explained in a previous article, activities that increase analytical thinking (even something as simple as looking at a statue of Rodin’s Thinker) can decrease religious belief, such as belief in God (Gervais & Norenzayan, 2012). Since sex priming can increase analytical thinking, it seems plausible to think that sex-priming could decrease religious belief by increasing analytical thinking. Religious beliefs seem to involve a focus on global ideas such as eternity and infinity. Furthermore, religious traditions emphasise the importance of having a long-term attachment to a higher power, much as one may have a long-term attachment to a loved one. Therefore, it also seems plausible that love-priming could have the opposite effect of sex-priming and strengthen religious beliefs instead. Experimental studies would be needed to confirm that these hypothesised effects really occur. For example, people could be subliminally primed with words relating either to love or to sex and then they could be asked to rate how strongly they believe in God.

This possibility that thinking about sex could weaken religious belief also led me to wonder if this has something to do with the fact that so many mainstream religions take such a negative view of sexuality, particularly lust without love. Religions generally teach people that dwelling on lustful sexual thoughts is “impure” and a distraction from one’s spiritual nature. Even non-procreative acts such as masturbation are proscribed as ‘sinful’ in monotheistic religions, so this is not simply a practical concern to prevent pregnancy outside of marriage. Popular images of the Devil in Christianity are actually inspired by earlier images of the ancient Greek god Pan, who was noted for his sensual lustful nature. Love on the other hand is extolled as a cardinal virtue and love of God in particular is considered to be of the utmost importance. The idea that one should “love thy neighbour as oneself” is certainly very admirable as an ideal, but realistically I doubt if there are very many people who could actually put this into practice. There may be many reasons why most religions tend to idealise love and to disavow lust. Perhaps, one of the reasons that most religions so strongly disapprove of any form of sex outside marriage is that lust without love undermines religious belief itself? There are no doubt other factors involved, but these need not be mutually exclusive.

Pan: divinity or devil?

On the other hand, there are some religious and spiritual traditions that have a more positive view of sexuality. In fact, I have read literary descriptions of the moment of orgasm as a transcendental experience in which one is momentarily elevated to a divine level of awareness. Perhaps the possible effect of sex priming on religious beliefs might depend on a person’s belief about whether sex has a transcendental, spiritual component. Additionally, the effects of priming thoughts about sex within a loving relationship have not been examined. This is potentially a fruitful area of investigation that might shed light on the relationships between sexual attitudes, religious beliefs, and the cognitive processes that underpin them.    

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References
Forster, J., Epstude, K., & Ozelsel, A. (2009). Why Love Has Wings and Sex Has Not: How Reminders of Love and Sex Influence Creative and Analytic Thinking Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 35 (11), 1479-1491 DOI: 10.1177/0146167209342755

Gervais, W., & Norenzayan, A. (2012). Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief Science, 336 (6080), 493-496 DOI: 10.1126/science.1215647

This post has previously appeared on my Psychology Today blog Unique - Like Everybody Else.

Eating Disorders and the Not So Female Brain

Attempts to link eating disorders to a hypothetical "extreme female brain" involve some convoluted logic 

A well-known theory of psychological sex differences proposed that autism represents a manifestation of an ‘extreme male brain’ type. A recent paper has claimed that the opposite type, or ‘extreme female brain’ is manifested in eating disorder symptoms, such as anorexia and bulimia. The evidence provided in the paper for this notion seems rather mixed, especially considering that some of the results applied more clearly to males than females. Additionally, there is evidence that eating disorders and autism have certain features in common even though they are supposed to represent opposite brain types. Characterising certain conditions as extremely ‘male’ or ‘female’ based on gender stereotypes may actually create more confusion than real understanding.

Is there a distinct "female brain" type? (Image courtesy of Victor Habbick at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Autism and the ‘extreme male brain’

Simon Baron-Cohen[1] proposed that men and women have evolved different brain-types[2] specialising in either of two distinct information processing modes. The two modes are empathizing, considered to be the drive to understand other people’s thoughts and feelings in order to predict how they will behave, and systematizing, considered as the drive to understand the rules that govern a system in order to predict how the system works. Individuals have their own balance of how much they have developed either of these capacities and most people have reasonable ability in both. According to Baron-Cohen’s research, men tend to be more specialised in systematizing, whereas women tend to be more specialised in empathizing. Baron-Cohen applied this theory to understanding the nature of autism spectrum conditions including Asperger’s syndrome. People with autism tend to have social and communication difficulties due to impairments in their ability put themselves ‘in another person’s shoes’, that is, to imagine another person’s thoughts and feelings. On the other hand, autistic people often have particular strengths in understanding physical systems. For example, studies on autistic children have found that they tend to have an unusually good grasp of intuitive physics. Baron-Cohen therefore argued that autistic people have a profile of well develop systematizing and poorly developed empathizing. He referred to this profile as representing the ‘extreme male brain’ on the grounds that autism occurs many times more frequently in males than females.

Mr Spock: someone with an extreme male brain?

Baron-Cohen proposed that therefore an ‘extreme female brain’ type might exist. This profile would be associated with particular strength in the area of empathizing and difficulty in the area of systematizing. He argued that this profile should be more common in women than men but did not attempt to describe what such a condition might be like, although he suggested that people like this might get along well in modern society due to their well-developed people skills, as long as they could avoid dealing with modern technology. 

Evidence for an ‘extreme female brain’?

Bremser and Gallup (2012) proposed that eating disorders are a manifestation of an ‘extreme female brain’ (EFB) that is a ‘mirror image of autism’. They justify this on the grounds that eating disorders are much more prevalent in females than males and cite evidence linking eating disorders to sex hormones. Additionally, they claim that fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety play an important role in the development of eating disorders. They argue that fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety can be linked to high levels of empathizing. Therefore, high empathizing (a feature of the proposed EFB) could predispose a person to eating disorders by making them vulnerable to fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety.

Their argument for the connection between empathizing and social anxiety is that sociability can be represented on a continuum with social apathy (characteristic of autism) at one end and social anxiety at the high end. However, anxiety about social interaction indicates that one is lacking confidence in one’s social skills. According to Baron-Cohen though empathizing is supposed to be a particular strength of the EFB. I therefore find it puzzling that high levels of empathizing would be assumed to go hand in hand with inadequate social skills. Current theories suggest that social anxiety is associated with self-focused rumination (thinking about oneself too much during social interactions) which does not sound much like empathic concern for other people. Furthermore, their own results contradict their argument. They did find that fear of negative evaluation and social anxiety were positively related to disordered eating. However, self-reported empathizing was found to have no relation at all to fear of negative evaluation and to be negatively correlated with a measure of social anxiety. That is, people who were high in empathizing were actually low in social anxiety and vice versa.[3]

Restrictive eating is more common in women than men. (Image courtesy of sattva at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)

A reasonably detailed description of the Bremser and Gallup study appears at Christian Jarrett’s blog. (A briefer description can be found here, while a more critical view can be found here.) Briefly, the authors performed a series of four studies to test their hypothesis that eating disorder symptoms are associated with a pattern of high empathizing and low systematizing. They did find modest positive correlations between self-reported empathizing and disordered eating when gender was not considered, apparently supporting their hypothesis. However, when they looked at differences between males and females there were some puzzling findings. In study 2 females who were either high or low in disordered eating did not differ in their level of self-reported empathizing (see Figure 2, p. 471). However, males who were high in disordered eating were higher in self-reported empathizing than males low in disordered eating. An even more puzzling finding was evident when they examined the relationship between emotion recognition (a test of empathic ability) and disordered eating (see Figure 1). Females high on disordered eating scored somewhat higher than other participants on this task, although it was not really clear from the authors’ report if this difference was statistically significant. What was more striking was that males high in disordered eating actually scored noticeably lower than all other participants on the emotion recognition task. Now remember that the authors’ hypothesis was that high empathizing would be associated with disordered eating, yet males with disordered eating actually scored worse than everyone else on a test of empathic ability, even though their self-reported empathy was higher. This suggests to me that these males had a lack of insight into their actual ability to register another person’s emotions. Yet quite oddly the authors claim that this anomalous finding actually supports rather than refutes their hypothesis:

“The data from males are consistent with the idea that disordered eating is associated with the hyper-empathizing that characterizes the EFB type.”

They attribute the failure of these males to correctly identify emotions as due to “hyper-mentalizing associated with the EFB” manifesting as “faulty inferences about mental states”. So they found a pattern associated with a particular group of males and then decide that this is evidence of an extreme female brain, even though none of the females manifested this pattern. Furthermore, failure in a test of empathic ability is interpreted as due to ‘hyper-empathizing’. In other words, when people are too high in empathizing they over-analyse other people and therefore make mistaken attributions about what they are thinking and feeling. The authors go on to explain: “This may be because they are using their own experience to model the experience of others, and their bias to classify emotions with a negative bias may influence their attributions.” In other words, they project their own concerns onto other people rather than trying to understand others on their own terms. This does not sound much like empathy to me. It actually sounds more like autism. People with autism also have trouble imagining that other people feel differently from themselves.

The authors actually cite research findings that people with eating disorders often show impaired emotion recognition. This would imply a failure of empathizing, yet Bremser and Gallup argue that this is actually due to “hyper-mentalizing”. They also appear to ignore previous research findings indicating commonalities between eating disorders and autism. For example, research had found that autism spectrum disorders sometimes precede the development of eating disorders and that 16% of teenage sufferers of anorexia have been estimated to have autism (Oldershaw, Treasure, Hambrook, Tchanturia, & Schmidt, 2011). Additionally, autism and anorexia may coexist within the same family suggesting they could have a shared genetic basis.

The authors argue that errors in emotion recognition tasks may be due to either a deficit in understanding (as in Asperger’s syndrome) or to abnormal or excessive attribution of mental states associated with psychotic type mental processes (referred to in the paper as schizotypal traits). I think they actually made a valid point about this. There is evidence that schizotypal traits play a role in eating disorders, particularly anorexia. This might seem to justify their claim that failures of emotion recognition are related to “hyper-mentalizing”. However, their own results show that although schizotypal traits were related to disordered eating they were largely unrelated to empathizing (see Table 7). Therefore their claim that “hyper-mentalizing” (associated with schizotypal traits) is related to “hyper-empathizing” seems unwarranted.

There was a significant correlation between the schizotypal scale ‘constricted affect’ and empathizing but this was in the negative direction. That is, people who were high in empathizing tended to be less constricted in their emotional expression. The authors noted that males who were low in constricted affect (and therefore emotionally expressive) also scored higher on disordered eating. In females there was no such relationship. The authors once again try to claim that this supports their theory by arguing that emotional expressiveness is a ‘feminine’ trait that is also related to empathizing. So therefore the finding that emotionally expressive men were more eating disordered is evidence of a relationship between the EFB and disordered eating. So yet again, a relationship found in men, but not women, is taken as evidence of a female brain type.

As previously noted the EFB is supposed to be high in empathizing and also poor in systematizing. Therefore, the authors predicted that disordered eating would be associated with poor systematizing. The actual results they found were mixed. Self-reported systematizing and a test of intuitive physics were unrelated to disordered eating. However, a test of mental rotation was found to have a significant negative correlation with disordered eating, indicating that those who performed more poorly on the mental rotation task had more disordered eating. Research has found that men tend to perform much better on tests of mental rotation than women, although some scholars have claimed that this is due to the psychological effects of gender stereotypes rather than innate differences between men and women (Ortner & Sieverding, 2008).  Bremser and Gallup did not report results for each gender so we do not know if men and women had different patterns of results. The authors acknowledge that self-starvation associated with disordered eating can produce deficits in task performance. This might explain why mental rotation was poorer in people with disordered eating. On the other hand, there were no impairments in performance on the intuitive physics task, so the results are difficult to interpret. 

What Conclusions can be drawn

Bremser and Gallup proposed that disordered eating would be associated with a pattern of high empathizing and poor systematizing they refer to as the EFB. They did find that there were modest positive associations between self-reported empathizing and disordered eating. Also, one of their studies found a moderate negative association between a systematizing task (mental rotation) and disordered eating, although two other studies using different systematizing measures found no such relationship. However, closer inspection of their results found that, when gender differences were reported, the relationship between empathizing and disordered eating occurred in men but not women. Their findings would seem to indicate that a pattern of high self-reported empathizing, poor emotion recognition, and emotional reactivity is associated with disordered eating in males but not females. Yet they claim this as evidence for an extreme female brain. Perhaps they should call this the ‘stereotypically feminine brain that leads to eating disorders in men’. Not nearly as catchy I know. Furthermore, they use some rather convoluted reasoning to explain why deficits in emotion recognition (that is, failures in empathizing) found in eating disorders should be associated with high empathizing by invoking “hyper-mentalizing”. The latter could plausibly be a feature of fear of negative evaluation and schizotypal tendencies, yet their own results indicated that these were unrelated to empathizing. There is in fact evidence for at least some overlap between eating disorders and autism, even though the EFB is supposed to represent the opposite of an autistic condition. I get the impression that the authors of this study decided that because eating disorders are so strongly associated with females that they would make a good candidate for an EFB, so they decided to try to force the result to fit their theory.

Image courtesy of Ventrilock at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Williams Syndrome: a better EFB?

So if eating disorders are not a very good candidate for a manifestation of an EFB is there something that is? The most logical candidate I am aware of is a rare condition known as Williams Syndrome. This condition is associated with extreme friendliness and sociability, and high levels of empathy (Klein-Tasman & Mervis, 2003), as well as subnormal IQ scores and difficulty understanding how a whole is made up of its parts, although language skills are generally highly developed (Farran & Jarrold, 2003). Williams Syndrome has even been referred to at times as the ‘anti-autism’ syndrome. For example, while people with autism show a disinterest in looking at faces, people with Williams Syndrome are fascinated by them (Riby & Hancock, 2008). Williams Syndrome neatly fits the profile of Baron-Cohen’s proposed EFB in that it combines strength in empathizing and difficulty in systematizing and seems more like a true ‘mirror image’ of autism. However, Williams Syndrome apparently occurs equally in males and females. Therefore, even though it meets most criteria for an EFB it does not seem to be particularly female. Anorexia is a predominantly female disorder yet it has actually been linked with autism, a supposedly extreme male disorder. Perhaps this shows that stereotyping certain conditions as extremely ‘male’ or extremely ‘female’ is actually misleading and hinders understanding them. Just because men tend to have more interest in systematizing than women does not necessarily make it a male province. Nor should empathizing be seen as a particularly female one. Furthermore, describing systematizing as a male domain and empathizing as a female one might have the effect of alienating member of the opposite sex from activities associated with each one and of needlessly reinforcing limiting gender stereotypes.

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[1] Yes, he actually is related to Sacha Baron-Cohen of ‘Borat’ fame.

[2] The term ‘brain type’ seems a misnomer as the theory is based on observations about personality and behaviour rather than direct studies of the brain. However, to maintain consistency with the existing literature the term ‘brain’ will continue to be used in this article.

[3] See results for Study 3, Table 7. 

   
This post has previously appeared on my blog at Psychology Today Unique - Like Everybody Else.

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© Scott McGreal. Please do not reproduce without permission. Brief excerpts may be quoted as long as a link to the original article is provided.  

References

Bremser JA, & Gallup GG Jr (2012). From one extreme to the other: negative evaluation anxiety and disordered eating as candidates for the extreme female brain. Evolutionary psychology : an international journal of evolutionary approaches to psychology and behavior, 10 (3), 457-86 PMID: 22947672

Farran, E. K., & Jarrold, C. (2003). Visuospatial Cognition in Williams Syndrome: Reviewing and Accounting for the Strengths and Weaknesses in Performance. Developmental Neuropsychology, 23(1-2), 173-200. doi: 10.1080/87565641.2003.9651891

Klein-Tasman, B. P., & Mervis, C. B. (2003). Distinctive Personality Characteristics of 8-, 9-, and 10-Year-Olds With Williams Syndrome. Developmental Neuropsychology, 23(1-2), 269-290. doi: 10.1080/87565641.2003.9651895

Oldershaw, A., Treasure, J., Hambrook, D., Tchanturia, K., & Schmidt, U. (2011). Is anorexia nervosa a version of autism spectrum disorders? European Eating Disorders Review, 19(6), 462-474. doi: 10.1002/erv.1069

Ortner, T. M., & Sieverding, M. (2008). Where are the Gender Differences? Male Priming Boosts Spatial Skills in Women. Sex Roles, 59(3-4), 274-281. doi: 10.1007/s11199-008-9448-9

Riby, D. M., & Hancock, P. J. B. (2008). Viewing it differently: Social scene perception in Williams syndrome and Autism. Neuropsychologia, 46(11), 2855-2860. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2008.05.003