Effects of Erotica upon Men's and Women's Loving and Liking Responses for Their Partners

Abstract

We replicated the essential features of the 1978 Dermer and Pysczinski study in two investigations with 70 and 197 subjects, respectively. The primary question was whether the reading of erotic texts (vs neutral texts) affects only scores on the 1970 Love scale of Rubin or also scores on the Liking scale. We tested men and women, both individually and in groups. We found no significant effects due to the experimental treatment on either of the scales for women and men. Present moods of the subjects yielded a double interaction with gender and the experimental treatment for scores on the Love scale, but not those on the Liking scale. We interpreted the interaction in relation to the discriminant validity of the two scales.