Emotions and Desire: Research Results
“Perhaps emotions are so much a part of everyday life that we take them for granted, erroneously believing that anything as ordinary as a feeling couldn’t possibly make the difference between ho-hum sex and sex that moves and satisfies us profoundly. Yet emotion plays an enormously important role in sexual desire, arousal, and fulfillment.”
– Jack Morin, Ph.D.
PRIMARY FINDINGS: PART 1
Overview of Research
For my Master’s research project I investigated the role emotions play in desire and pleasure. Specifically, I wanted to discover if individuals could identify emotional states that lead to greater arousal and sexual fulfillment. I theorized that subjective emotional experiences of erotic pleasure and desire provide essential context for sexual behavior. How an individual wants to feel during sexual activity is a hidden motivator not only for sex-acts, but partner choice, communication, and decisions regarding safety. Yet, despite the potential value of studying subjective emotional experiences, the emotional aspects of both pleasure and desire are primarily absent from sexuality research. Desire is generally understood to be sex-desire, rather than the desire to have an experience or to meet an oblique emotional need. My research demonstrates that emotions play a crucial role in generating sexual desire and experiencing pleasure, and that specific emotions may hinder experiences of pleasure.
I created a twenty-two question anonymous survey designed to collect quantitative data about participants' ability to identify their desires, communicate their desires to partners, and identify obstacles that prevent participants from communicating their desires. The survey also collected demographic data including: age, race, sexual orientation, and gender identity. During the summer of 2020, 379 complete surveys were collected from adults ages 18 to 85+. The participants were primarily aged 26-45, white, female, and straight.
Results
This is a word cloud of the results for participants preferred Emotional Aphrodisiacs. As you can see in the word cloud, the larger the word, the more preferred it is. Prior to data collection, the 74 emotions were categorized into emotional themes which I then color-coded in the word cloud.
Red: Intimacy
Purple: Euphoria
Dark Green: Contentment
Light Blue: Vulnerability
Dark Blue: Hostility
Acid Green: Guilt
What I predicted was a broad scattering of all the emotions offered, but the results for participant’s Emotional Aphrodisiacs was somewhat surprising. The data clearly demonstrates that two emotions are significantly preferred above all others: connected, and desired. Over 18% of participants desire feeling connected to their partners during sexual activity, while almost 13% want to feel desired by their partners. What this suggests about American desire and pleasure is that individuals want to feel close to their partner(s), even if that closeness is merely presence in the moment rather than long-term commitment. Individuals also want to feel desired or desirable.
Generally individuals desired experiences of intimacy and euphoria. Feelings of intimacy include emotions like: connected, desired, loved, adored, and cared for. While feelings of euphoria include emotions like: wanted, free, irresistible, sexy, and playful. In contrast, feelings of hostility, such as: feeling taken advantage of, and exploitative, or feelings of guilt: like taboo, are far less preferred.
Forty-nine percent of participants expressed that they felt “Very Comfortable” experiencing their preferred Emotional Aphrodisiacs. While only 11% expressed feeling very uncomfortable or uncomfortable. What is significant here, is not that some participants are uncomfortable while most are comfortable, what is interesting is the Emotional Aphrodisiacs that correspond to comfort levels – there aren’t any. Some participants who chose connection as their preferred Emotional Aphrodisiac felt very uncomfortable experiencing it. While participants who chose more rare Emotional Aphrodisiacs, like taboo, felt very comfortable experiencing it. What this means, is that having desires that are more socially accepted or normalized do not dictate an individual’s emotional comfort or ease.
There was an option for participants to write-in their preferred emotion if they did not locate it on the list. Numerous participants did so, and not a single participant wrote in that they could not identify an emotion that they found arousing. This is significant, because it demonstrates that when prompted, individuals understand their arousal and pleasure through an emotional lens. Human beings have a vast emotional experience that intersects with all aspects of their lives, therefore it stands to reason that emotions play a pivotal role in sexual desire and pleasure as well.