Aberrant sexual arousal in sexual offenders

The present article has reviewed the experimental work concerning deviant sexual arousal to sexually aggressive and nonsexually aggressive cues in rapists and child molesters. To date, the results of this work are encouraging and indicate that we are able to identify these two offender groups on the basis of their erectile responses to sexual violence despite variability due to laboratories, stimulus material, and language. In addition, recent suggestions regarding the standardization of procedures and stimulus material have been considered. It has been argued that while standardization has a number of advantages, we must be careful not to discourage the development of new procedures nor to oversell current assessment procedures. Finally, some directions for future research have been outlined and suggestions based on empirical findings made for ways in which we might begin standardization.