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. 2023 Mar 10;13(1):4042.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-31181-y.

The effects of sexual shame, emotion regulation and gender on sexual desire

K W Sævik  1 , C Konijnenberg  2
Affiliations

The effects of sexual shame, emotion regulation and gender on sexual desire

K W Sævik et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Sexual desire is of importance to sexual health, functioning, and well-being. Although an increasing number of studies address disorders related to sexual functioning, there is still a limited understanding of the underlying individual factors affecting sexual desire. The aim of the current study was to investigate the effect of sexual shame, emotion regulation strategies, and gender on sexual desire. In order to investigate this, sexual desire, expressive suppression, cognitive reappraisal, and sexual shame was measured in 218 Norwegian participants using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire-10, the Sexual Desire Inventory-2, and the Sexual Shame Index-Revised. A multiple regression analysis indicated that cognitive reappraisal predicted sexual desire, β = 0.343, (218) = 5.09, p < 001, CI [0.407, 0.920], whereas sexual shame and expressive suppression were unrelated to sexual desire. Men scored significantly higher than women on expressive suppression, F(1, 216) = 24.968, p < 0.001; partial η2 = 0.104. The current study did not find any significant differences between women and men on cognitive reappraisal, sexual desire or sexual shame, all p > 0.05. Results from the current study indicates that the inclination toward cognitive reappraisal as a preferred emotion regulation strategy may positively affect the strength of sexual desire.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Standardized structural path estimates in a model testing the relationship between sexual shame, expressive suppression, and cognitive reappraisal (standardized regression coefficients and correlation between variables). *p < 0.001.
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