Women’s rejection of sexually explicit material: the role of hyperfemininity and processing style

Research has shown that women tend to reject male-centered sexually explicit material (SEM). However, such responses have hardly been explained empirically. Therefore, the present study had two goals: 1) to investigate whether women’s rejection of SEM depends on individual differences in sexual beliefs (i.e., hyperfemininity), and 2) to explain this effect by looking at the way sexual material is processed. In an online experiment among women aged 18-30 (N = 195), both the type of SEM (male- vs. female-centered), and processing style (response- vs. stimulus-focused) were manipulated. In addition, participants were divided into three groups based on their degree of hyperfemininity (low, moderate, high). Results showed that when using stimulus-focused processing (i.e., attending to the characters and situational context of the story), male-centered SEM elicited more rejection (relative to female-centered material), but only among women with low and moderate degrees of hyperfemininity.