Previous research has suggested that women with a negative emotional orientation toward sexuality (i.e., erotophobia) have difficulty learning and retaining sexually relevant material such as contraceptive information. It has been hypothesized that these women become aroused by this material and that this arousal interferes with their ability to learn it. The importance of this issue led us to conduct the current study. Erotophobic and erotophilic women viewed presentations about contraception while their physiological responses were being monitored. In addition, they were tested on the information contained in the presentation before, immediately after, and again 4-6 weeks after the presentation. The results indicated that the erotophobic women knew less contraceptive information before the presentation and were more aroused by the presentation. This arousal, however, did not interfere with retention of the material. These results are discussed in terms of individual differences in reactions to sexual material and the ability to learn, retain, and use contraceptive information.
PIP: The effect of positive or negative sexual orientation and degree of arousal during learning on retention of contraceptive content was assessed using pre-testing and control subjects. 72 female subjects were classified on the basis of a Sexual Experience Survey and the Sexual Opinion Survey as erotophilic or erotophobics. To control for the effect prior knowledge, pretests on contraceptive knowledge and the anatomy of the skeletal system were administered. Physiological arousal was measured by skin resistance. Subjects viewed 5-minute slide and tape presentations on conception and contraception and on the skeletal system. Initially, erotophilic women, and those classified as effective contraceptors, performed better on tests of contraceptive knowledge, but not on knowledge of the skeletal system. After adjusting for pretest scores, there was no difference in posttest scores on these topics. Initial follow-up scores 4-6 weeks later showed no differences, although adjusted scores were higher for erotophobic women. There were no physiological differences during the pretest, but as predicted, the erotophobic women were significantly more aroused during the birth control presentation. The adjusted birth control follow-up test scores were positively correlated with arousal. Thus, the hypothesis that erotophobic women have difficulty learning sexually explicit material on contraception was not supported.