Female sexual arousal: relation between cognitive and genital assessments

Evidence from the literature concerning the relation between subjective and physiologic assessment of sexual arousal in women is sparse and inconsistent. This study assessed the relation between self-report of arousal and changes in vaginal vasocongestion in 30 nondysfunctional women during the follicular, ovulatory and luteal phases of one menstrual month. Sexual arousal, a woman's emotional response to an erotic situation, was defined as the current momentary level of excitation in response to standardized stimuli. Dependent measures of sexual arousal included a scaled subjective assessment, genital pulse amplitude, and time above a criterion level of increased vasocongestion. Significant individual differences in sexual arousal were found with all measures. Evidence of construct validity was found for the concept of sexual arousability: arousal responses were found to be highly correlated across three stimulus conditions in each laboratory session. Erotic tape recordings elicited more arousal than fantasies. Subjective reports of degree of sexual arousal were all positively correlated with objective assessments of sexual arousal, but few correlations reached significant levels; subjective-physiologic correlations were higher when arousal was elicited by fantasy than when the stimulus was an erotic tape and during the luteal phase of the menstrual cycle.