Sexual arousal and heterosexual perception.

It has been theorized that high drive initiates an autistic perceptual process operating in the direction of drive gratification. In the present study, it was hypothesized that (a) under conditions of high drive, perceptual distortion of drive-relevant objects occurs principally along drive-relevant dimensions; (b) the direction of distortion is toward enhancement of the object's potential for drive satisfaction; (c) the degree of accessibility of the object for potential drive gratification affects the extent to which drive-relevant characteristics of the object arc enhanced. These hypotheses were tested in a personperception situation in which level of sexual arousal and accessibility of the judged stimulus object (a prospective date) were varied. A two-factor multivariatc analysis of variance with three dependent measures indicated that arousal level of judge, accessibility of stimulus object, and dimension relevance interact in determining perception of stimulus person. This and additional findings are discussed. Bruner and Goodman (1947) first proposed to study the variations that perception undergoes when one is hungry, in love, in pain, or solving a problem |p. 33]. Since then, many investigators have examined the impact of motivational factors on perception, most particularly on the perception of stimuli related to the drive under consideration. Much of this research has focused directly on Bruner and Goodman's hypothesis, that as motivational level increases, drive-related objects become more vivid, have greater clarity or greater brightness or greater apparent size p. 36. Although the perceptual accentuation hypothesis was initially couched in general terms, experimental investigations of the proposition have been confined largely to tests of a special derivation of the hypothesis. Most experiments have been concerned with the judgment of size of objects, most particularly objects associated with monetary value, and among these, most especially coins.