Journal
LEARNING AND MOTIVATION
Volume 39, Issue 2, Pages 136-145Publisher
ACADEMIC PRESS INC ELSEVIER SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1016/j.lmot.2007.09.002
Keywords
reward; reinforcement; sex; motivation; men; women; male; female; incentive sensitization; heterosexual
Categories
Funding
- NIDA NIH HHS [R01 DA017959] Funding Source: Medline
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Gender may be involved in the motivational processing of facial beauty. This study applied a behavioral probe, known to activate brain motivational regions, to healthy heterosexual subjects. Matched samples of men and women were administered two tasks: (a) key pressing to change the viewing time of average or beautiful female or male facial images, and (b) rating the attractiveness of these images. Men expended more effort (via the key-press task) to extend the viewing time of the beautiful female faces. Women displayed similarly increased effort for beautiful male and female images, but the magnitude of this effort was substantially lower than that of men for beautiful females. Heterosexual facial attractiveness ratings were comparable in both groups. These findings demonstrate heterosexual specificity of facial motivational targets for men, but not for women. Moreover, heightened drive for the pursuit of heterosexual beauty in the face of regular valuational assessments, displayed by men, suggests a gender-specific incentive sensitization phenomenon. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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