Context also affects the hormonal profile. Various studies give insights in how the hormonal profile might react to perceptions and external events: again, these studies generally measure testosterone levels. For example, it seems testosterone is released (along with accompanying optimism and energy levels) as a man watches a sexually explicit movie, peaking some sixty to ninety minutes after the movie has been seen, whereas such a release does not occur when a sexually neutral movie is watched.122 No doubt similar testosterone release occurs in relation to viewing pornographic material and whilst engaging in sexual fantasy. Testosterone levels can increase as a man has a brief conversation with a woman, perhaps with the intent to impress her,123 and more generally (depending on initial level of arousal), when a male relates to a novel female.124 These findings have implications for the possible effect of exposure to sexual situations (including sexual abuse, sexualisation of relationships, sexualisation in the media, and pornography) on the prevailing testosterone levels in males.
Sexual conditioning: The impulse that repeats the past
While hormones play a role in priming and energising sexual behaviour, other neural systems also contribute to shaping sexual behaviour through behavioural conditioning. Classical (or Pavlovian) conditioning has to do with pairing a neutral stimulus with another stimulus that evokes an automatic response. In this context, a pairing might occur of sexual arousal with a particular image or object. Operant (or instrumental) conditioning has to do with what sexual behaviours are reinforced or punished: this determines whether such behaviours are likely to occur again. Our interest is especially in classical conditioning, which involves automatic physiological responses governed by implicit memories. Being an automatic function of the brain rather than being governed by personal choice, it finds its place as part of the BDP, rather than the SDP. Such conditioned pairing of object or context with a sexual response may be advantageous; but it may also result in a contamination of association, where neural networks make unwanted connections between various stimuli, including ideas and experiences. In the realm of sexual behaviour, this generally means unwanted sexual arousal triggered by various objects, thoughts or contexts; or alternatively, unwanted sexual inhibition triggered by certain thoughts or contexts.
In their research with animals, Pfaus, et al. (2014) found that neutral cues were easily conditioned to sexual desire, arousal, and copulatory behaviour. They explain ‘although sexual behaviour is controlled by hormonal and neurochemical actions in the brain, sexual experience induces a degree of plasticity that allows animals to form instrumental and Pavlovian associations that predict sexual outcomes, thereby directing the strength of sexual responding’ (p. 147). They further propose that ‘endogenous opioid activation forms the basis of sexual reward, which also sensitises hypothalamic and mesolimbic dopamine systems in the presence of cues that predict sexual reward. Those systems act to focus attention on, and activate goal-directed behaviour toward, reward-related stimuli’ (p. 147). That is, even though hormonal processes might activate the animal’s ‘sex drive’, learning processes, mediated by dopamine release, were then involved in creating associations with the object or focus of sexual interest, thus affecting later behaviour. The conditioning process stimulated pair-bonding so that an animal would seek out a sexual partner bearing the cue to which it had been conditioned — yet another mechanism connecting sexual activity with the sense of belonging.
Animal studies also show that the environmental cues that come to be associated with opioid release occurring during sexual climax can activate hormonal activity, priming both males and females for sexual activity.125 The hormones priming for sexual activity can in turn be stimulated by environmental factors previously associated with sexual activity. Pfaus, et al. (2014) observe that ‘sexual behaviour epitomises the whole-body relationship between autonomic activation and central nervous function. Yet part of that biological substrate is an enormous adaptive flexibility in the brain that allows individual and idiosyncratic Pavlovian and operant associations to be made between external stimuli, behavioural responses, and sexual reward’ (p. 184). In other words, an animal learns to be sexually aroused by things that happen to be associated with sexual arousal in the past.
This conditioning principle predicts that the cues associated with sexual arousal in the past can later contribute to the stimulation of sexual desire. That is, a history of sexual arousal in a certain context can create sexual desire in relation to that context. Sexual arousal can lead to sexual desire, just as sexual desire can lead to sexual arousal. This principle can play a critical role in the development of various sexual fetishes, but also in the longer-term effects of certain fantasies and exposure to various erotic stimuli. And so, for example, because difference is an important arousal factor, an adolescent may access increasingly risqué pornographic images (involving, for example, same-sex situations, multiple sexual partners, sexual violence, children, etc.), and sexual arousal responses then become conditioned to those stimuli. A person learns to sexually desire those things that sexually aroused him in the past.
The principles of conditioning theory have also underpinned various therapeutic interventions in sexual behaviour (particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, when a different political climate prevailed regarding acceptable targets for sexual behavioural change). These interventions included ‘orgasmic reconditioning’,126 aversive control procedures, and desensitisation (habituation) procedures,127 practiced especially in relation to homosexual behaviours. That is, therapy was based on the idea that changes in sexual behaviour and orientation could be learned because of the inherent ability of the brain to adapt to experience. Not surprisingly, such therapy had mixed results given the overall complexity of the sexual response. Success was much more likely when therapeutic goals were aligned with personal desire for change, based on other subjective drive factors.
All this means that the early circumstances of a person’s sexual experiences may be significant from a conditioning perspective. Animal research suggests that initial sexual experiences play a critical role in shaping sexual responses to particular stimuli. Pfaus, et al. (2014) explain: ‘a critical period exists during an individual’s early sexual experience that creates a “love map” or Gestalt of features, movements, feelings, and interpersonal interactions associated with sexual reward’ (p.147). They argue that there are critical periods in the development of sexual profiles: ‘certain critical ages and during certain critical events (i.e., first experiences of sexual desire, masturbation, sexual release, first partnered activity), the sensory, cognitive, affective, and motoric aspects of sexuality become fundamentally integrated, organised by direct experience of reward and pleasure… these integrated experiences crystallise into stable preferences for certain sexual acts and certain partner characteristics.’128
Consistent with the principles of classical learning theory, the circumstances and cues that relate to early sexual experiences lay a foundation for subsequent patterns of sexual arousal and sexual desire. This means, for example, that the ‘experimental’ sexual experiences of adolescence can play a significant role in shaping later sexual expectations and orientation. In this regard, Bem wrote: ‘I am willing to entertain the possibility that a process akin to imprinting may also contribute to the eroticization of arousal and the temporal stability of sexual orientation across the life course, again with particular force for the gender-nonconforming child who is taunted by same-sex peers.’129 Initial learning in sexual experience and behaviour creates neural imprints that play a critical role in later sexual behaviour.
And so we see that the reward systems in sexual attraction are complex. While sexual desire is largely anticipatory in nature, the pleasure