Automatic attention to sexual stimuli: exploring the role of neuroticism and sexual excitation/inhibition through event-related potentials.

This article investigates how neuroticism influences automatic attention to sexual visual stimuli, focusing on the mediating role of sexual inhibition and excitation propensities measured by the Sexual Inhibition/Excitation Scales (SIS/SES). Using event-related potentials (ERPs) recorded during exposure to romantic and sexually explicit images, the study found that neuroticism predicts higher sexual inhibition due to threat of performance failure (SIS1), which in turn fully mediates the effect of neuroticism on the N2 ERP component associated with automatic attention. Specifically, individuals with high neuroticism and SIS1 showed increased N2 amplitude and earlier latency, suggesting heightened and prioritized cognitive processing of sexual stimuli that may reflect a stress-related hypervigilance. The findings highlight the importance of early automatic attentional processes in sexual cognition and suggest potential clinical implications for interventions targeting hyperarousal in individuals with sexual difficulties linked to neuroticism.