Men's genital arousal occurs in response to a limited number of sexual stimuli, whereas women's genital arousal occurs in response to a wide range of sexual stimuli, including those depicting nonpreferred cues. Researchers have hypothesized that women's nonspecific pattern of genital arousal prepares the body for sexual activity, thus functioning to protect the genital organs against injury. If this hypothesis is correct, women should show genital responses to any cues suggesting sexual activity, even unappealing cues that involve nonconsensual sex and extreme violence. Fifteen men and 15 women listened to fourteen 2-min audiotaped narratives that depicted an interaction between a man and a woman and that varied factorially according to the presence of consent, violence, and sexual activity. The results support the preparation hypothesis: Men showed the greatest genital arousal in response to narratives depicting consensual, nonviolent sex, whereas women showed similar responses to all the narratives involving sexual activities, including those describing a sexual assault.

Psychological Science, the flagship journal of the Association for Psychological Science, is one of the premier journals in its field, with a citation ranking/impact factor that places it in the top 10 psychology journals worldwide. The journal publishes authoritative articles of interest across all of scientific psychology's subdisciplines, including the behavioral, clinical, cognitive, neural, and social sciences. In addition to these full-length articles, Psychological Science also features short summaries of new research developments.

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