Hormonal predictors of women's sexual motivation

Publication date: Available online 18 February 2019Source: Evolution and Human BehaviorAuthor(s): Talia N. Shirazi, Heather Self, Khytam Dawood, Kevin A. Rosenfield, Lars Penke, Justin M. Carré, Triana Ortiz, David A. PutsAbstractWomen's mating psychology may have evolved to track reproductive conditions, including conception risk, across and between ovulatory cycles. Alternatively, within-woman correlations between mating psychology and ovarian hormones may be byproducts of between-women relationships. Here, we examined associations between steroid hormones and two facets of sexual psychology with putatively different adaptive functions, sociosexual orientation and general sexual desire, in a sample of naturally cycling women (NC; n = 348, 87 of whom completed 2 sessions) and hormonally contracepting women (HC; n = 266, 65 of whom completed 2 sessions). Across two sessions, increases in estradiol predicted elevated sociosexual desires in NC women, and this relationship was stronger in women whose progesterone simultaneously decreased across sessions. Changes in hormones were not associated with changes in general sexual desire. Between-subjects differences in testosterone robustly, positively predicted sociosexuality and general sexual desire among NC women. Hormones were not consistently related to changes or differences in sexual psychology among HC women. The present results are consistent with testosterone contributing to individual differences, or modulating re...

Source: Evolution and Human Behavior - February 19, 2019 Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research