Identifying with Asexuality and Belonging to the Ace Spectrum: More than Lacking Sexual Attraction

Asexuality is typically defined as a lack of sexual attraction, not representing the multitude of experiences in the ace community. To understand the complex ace identity, we explored the correlates cognitions, feelings, and desires of ace individuals. Results of a cross-sectional study (N = 447, 61.8% women; Mage = 24.62, SD = 6.98) showed that endorsing asexuality as a lack of sexual desire was associated with less experience with romantic partners, more experience with intimate affective relationships, more sex averse attitudes, and avoidant attachment. Sexual attraction was associated with more experience with romantic partners, less experience with intimate romantic and affective relationships, and more sex favorable attitudes. Romantic attraction was associated with more experience with romantic partners, less experience with intimate romantic relationships, and anxious attachment. Desire to establish intimate romantic relationships was associated with more experience with romantic partners, more sex favorable attitudes, and anxious attachment. Lastly, desire to establish intimate affective relationships was associated with more experience with affective relationships and anxious attachment. This study highlights the need to acknowledge diversity within the ace community by showing the importance of past experiences and individual differences in shaping the way ace individuals construe their identity and their relationships.

Roles of P300 and Late Positive Potential in Initial Romantic Attraction

Initial romantic attraction (IRA) refers to a series of positive reactions to potential romantic partners at the initial encounter; it evolved to promote mate selection, allowing individuals to focus their mating efforts on their preferred potential mates. After decades of effort, we now have a deeper understanding of the evolutionary value and dominant factors of IRA; however, little is known regarding the brain mechanisms related to its generation and evaluation. In this study, we combined classic event-related potential analysis with dipole-source analysis to examine electroencephalogram (EEG) signals generated while participants assessed their romantic interest in potential partners. The EEG signals were categorized into IRA-engendered and unengendered conditions based on behavioral indicators. We found that the faces elicited multiple late positivities, including P300 over the occipital–parietal regions and late positive potentials (LPPs) over the anterior regions. When compared to faces that did not engender IRA, faces that did engender IRA elicited (1) enhanced P300 over the parietal regions and heightened neural activity in the insula and cingulate cortex and (2) larger LPPs over the anterior regions and heightened neural activity in the orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, cingulate cortex, frontal eye field, visual cortex, and insula. These results suggest IRA is generated and evaluated by an extensive brain network involved in emotion processing, attention control, and social evaluations. Furthermore, these findings indicate that P300 and LPP may represent different cognitive processes during IRA.

Who Falls in Love With a Narcissist? Testing Women’s Romantic Attraction Towards Fictional Male Characters

The present research examined whether women’s narcissistic traits, thrill-seeking, impulsivity, and attachment style are associated with their level of attraction towards narcissistic men. Two trait dimensions of narcissism were distinguished: admiration (i.e., promoting oneself to gain admiration) and rivalry (i.e., devaluing others to protect one’s self-view). Participants (195 heterosexual women, Mage = 20.78, SD = 2.40) were asked to rate their level of attraction towards 25 pictures of fictional male characters who score relatively high or low on narcissism. Using multilevel modelling, we found that women were more attracted to men with high levels of narcissistic admiration (vs. low), and less attracted towards men with high scores on narcissistic rivalry (vs. low). We found no evidence that women who scored high on narcissism were more attracted to narcissistic men. Response surface analyses revealed that women who scored high on thrill-seeking (vs. low) were more attracted to narcissistic admiration, and to a lesser extent to narcissistic rivalry. Additionally, we discovered that women who scored high on impulsivity or avoidant attachment (vs. low) were (to a small extent) more attracted to narcissistic rivalry. Identifying women who are attracted to narcissistic men can help to implement and improve prevention or intervention programs related to narcissism in romantic relationships.

Sexuality, Sexual Behavior, and Relationships of Asexual Individuals: Differences Between Aromantic and Romantic Orientation

Asexuality is a complex construct with a considerable lack of research until recently. Building upon available findings, we examined the extent to which romantic orientation shapes individual and relationship experiences and expectations of asexual individuals. Specifically, our research focused on the distinction between romantic asexual individuals, who experience romantic attraction, and aromantic asexual individuals, who do not experience romantic attraction. A cross-sectional study with members of different asexual online communities (N = 447, 55.02% women; Mage = 24.77, SD = 7.21) aimed at examining how both groups differ in their identification with the asexuality construct as measured by the Asexuality Identification Scale (Yule et al., 2015), individual perspectives on sexuality, sexual behavior and relationships, concerns about commitment and sexual performance in a relationship, and attachment style. Results showed that aromantic asexual individuals identified more with asexuality, reported a more avoidant attachment style, and were more concerned with relationship commitment. In contrast, romantic asexual individuals reported less sex aversion, more sexual experiences (both past and current), and more sexual partners in the past. These individuals also indicated to have engaged in romantic relationships more frequently, desire to engage in romantic relationship in the future (either with or without sexual intimacy), and were more concerned with sexual performance. Overall, our findings contribute to the literature by highlighting the need to consider romantic orientation when examining asexuality and its interpersonal outcomes.

Predictors of Disclosing Sexual Orientation to Parents, Classmates, and School Adults among Latinx Sexual Minority High School and College Youth

The current study examined predictors associated with the degree of sexual orientation disclosure across social contexts (parents, classmates, and school adults) and educational context (high school and college) among Latinx sexual minority youth (SMY; N = 238). Results revealed that perceptions of more supportive social attitudes to sexual minority communities were associated with higher levels of sexual orientation disclosure across social contexts, including parents, classmates, and school adults. Compared to monosexual Latinx SMY, plurisexual Latinx SMY reported lower levels of sexual orientation disclosure to parents and school adults but not to classmates. Sexual orientation identity centrality was only associated with sexual orientation disclosure to parents but not to classmates or school adults. Degree of romantic attraction to the same gender was not associated with sexual orientation disclosure. Findings provide preliminary support for critical nuances in sexual orientation disclosure across social and educational contexts among Latinx SMY.

Composing aromanticism

The term "aromantic" describes those who experience little to no romantic attraction to other people, marking a queer identity hardly referenced in either scholarship or popular conversation. Aromanticism's obscurity doesn't only render it difficult for aromantic people to communicate to those who don't identify or aren't familiar with the term -- it also often leaves aromantics themselves uncertain as to how they might put their perspectives and experiences to words (much less music, visual art, and so on). In this thesis, I suggest that both the aromantic community and composition studies might benefit from some manner of allyship or collaboration with each other. While scholars of queer composition have been publishing exciting work for the past several decades on queering form and genre, writing pedagogy, even how success or failure in composing can be imagined as a whole, their scholarship has yet to either acknowledge the aromantic community's presence or incorporate some of its viewpoints. Following such scholars as Jonathan Alexander, Jacqueline Rhodes, and Stacey Waite, I wonder how queering composition might look different if aromanticism were incorporated into it. To do so, I share from my own aromantic experiences and compositions as well as offer overviews on the contemporary aromantic community and composition studies' queer table. The resulting project is a collage of research and something like prose poetry (not to mention drama and visual art), itself a text that takes a hopeful stab at queering form, queerly content as to whether it might succeed or fail in its genre.

Predicting Romantic Interest during Early Relationship Development: A Preregistered Investigation using Machine Learning

There are massive literatures on initial romantic attraction and established, “official” relationships. But there is a gap in our knowledge about early relationship development: the interstitial stretch of time in which people experience rising and falling romantic interest for partners who have the potential to—but often do not—become sexual or dating partners. In the current study, 208 single participants reported on 1,065 potential romantic partners across 7,179 data points over seven months. In stage 1 of the analyses, we used machine learning (specifically, Random Forests) to extract estimates of the extent to which different classes of predictors (e.g., individual differences vs. target-specific constructs) accounted for participants’ romantic interest in these potential partners (12% vs. 36%, respectively). Also, the machine learning analyses offered little support for perceiver × target moderation accounts of compatibility: the meta-theoretical perspective that some types of perceivers are likely to experience greater romantic interest for some types of targets. In stage 2, we used traditional multilevel-modeling approaches to depict growth-curve analyses for each predictor retained by the machine learning models; robust (positive) main effects emerged for many variables, including sociosexuality, gender, the potential partner’s positive attributes (e.g., attractive, exciting), attachment features (e.g., proximity seeking, separation distress), and perceived interest. We also directly tested (and found no support for) ideal partner preference-matching effects on romantic interest, which is one popular perceiver × target moderation account of compatibility. We close by discussing the need for new models and perspectives to explain how people assess romantic compatibility.

Trojan Horses: The Counterintuitive Use of Dinah, Helen, and Goliath in Joseph and Aseneth

A primary theme of the first story in Joseph and Aseneth (Jos. Asen. 1–21) is the conversion of an Egyptian to the worship of the living God, motivated by romantic attraction. In this respect, Joseph and Aseneth is one among many ancient novelistic writings to use a story about intermarriage, in this case the marriage of a Hebrew to an Egyptian, as a means to explore themes related to hybridity. Though different in tone, I propose that the second story (Jos. Asen. 22–29) is equally concerned with hybridity and that it can likewise be read as expressing an intercultural sensibility that is open to gentile incorporation and intermarriage through its imitation—and subversion—of literary models from two different cultural domains, the Jewish Scriptures (the rape of Dinah; the slaying of Goliath) and classical Greek literature (the abduction of Helen).