Female's Proceptivity and Receptivity as a Function of Hormonal Cyclicity

Perper and Weiss, (1987) have provided evidence that females exert active control over the courtship process through their use of proceptive signals and rejection strategies (see Female Courtship Strategies). I think that the female's use of proceptive signals and rejection strategies to control the progression of physical intimacy in a relationship is a partially a function of her hormonal state at the time of the courtship interaction. Higher levels of estrogen prior to ovulation should correspond to higher levels of proceptive and receptive behavior because of increased sexual motivation (indexed by measures of sex drive and autoeroticism). Two studies will be conducted *someday* to test this hypothesis.

Female sexual strategies have received some attention in the animal literature (Daly & Wilson, 1983; Herbert, 1978; Leshner, 1978; Mitchell, 1981). To survive as a species, all organisms must adapt to their environments and produce viable offspring which survive to produce offspring (Daly and Wilson, 1983; Darwin, 1871). According to Leshner (1978), hormonal states affect the form and intensity of the female animal's responses to sexual advances. Most nonhuman female mammals have a cyclic ovarian estrus cycle, during which they have a fairly limited period of sexual receptivity and emit olfactory, and behavioral signals of their willingness to copulate (Daly & Wilson, 1983). It is well established that there is a relationship between sexual behavior and changes in levels of testosterone, estrogen and progesterone (Leshner, 1978). Female receptivity coincides with elevated levels of estradiol prior to ovulation (Leshner, 1978). Ovarectomized females exhibit reduced levels of sexual responding including decreases in attractiveness, proceptive signaling to males and receptivity to male advances (Leshner, 1978). Estrogens seem to be the most important gonadotrophic hormone in female sexual responding. This effect has been demonstrated by selectively blocking the effects of estrogen (Arai & Gorski, 1968, Luttge et al., 1975l Whalen & Gorzalka, 1973) and by giving estrogen to ovarectomized animals (Beach & Merari, 1970; Bermont & Davidson, 1974; Davidson, Smith, Rodgers, & Bloch, 1968; Young, 1941). High levels of progesterone after ovulation are related to reductions in sexual libido in some primates (Mitchell, 1981).

Kendrick and Dixson (1985) examined the effects of estrogen and progesterone in marmosets and found that preovulatory levels of estradiol significantly increased the females' proceptive and receptive tongue-flicking displays and reduced the percentage of mounts refused. Mid-luteal levels of progesterone, by comparison, virtually abolished proceptive and receptive tongue-flicking and significantly increased mount refusals. Similar results were obtained in rhesus monkeys (Wallen, 1984). During this period, females initiated over 90% of all approaches. Female patterns of approach, follow, and initiate proximity increased several days prior to the estradiol peak, peaked on the day of the estradiol peak, then declined completely or to very low frequencies. Mounts, intromissions, and ejaculations increased significantly on the day of the estradiol peak, remained elevated for 2 days, then declined completely by the 5th day after peak estradiol. Nadler and Collins (1984) found convergent patterns of female behavior in captive gorillas. Females were found to be increasingly attractive to males during the follicular phase of the menstrual cycle when estrogen and testosterone concentrations in the female were increasing. Females solicited mating from the males primarily at midcycle, about the time when concentration of testosterone was maximal. No mating occurred during the mid- to late luteal phase after progesterone concentrations were elevated. Both males and females initiated mating during the midcycle periovulatory period. However in the lion tamarin who exhibits continuus receptivity and concealed estrus Stribley, French and Inglett (1987) found no significant changes in affiliative behavior by females or males that were associated with changes in urinary estrogen values. It seems that the relationship between female hormonal states and sexual behavior is be a function of the species in which it is studied.

In human females there is a monthly cycle that lasts approximately 28 days (Carlson, 1986). The beginning of the cycle if marked by the onset of menstruation. During the first half of the cycle, the anterior pituitary gland secretes follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and lutinizing hormone (LH) which stimulate the growth of ovarian follicles which begin to produce estradiol. About day twelve, the estrodiol level increases to around 200 pg/ml and triggers a surge of LH and FSH which lead to ovulation at approximately day 14 of the cycle. The ruptured follicle becomes the corpus luteum and begins to secrete progesterone and estradiol. Progesterone serves to maintain the lining of the uterus for implantation of the fertilized ovum. If the ovum is not fertilized then the corpus luteum stops producing estradiol and progesterone and menstruation will begin. However, female sexual responsiveness in humans is not so directly dependent on hormonal states and ovulation does not result in overt physical changes (Daly & Wilson, 1978; Jameson, 1988).

There is some evidence that female sexual desire does fluctuate during the menstrual cycle. Adams, Gold and Burt (1978) found that women report more autosexual activity: they masturbate more, report more sexual fantasies, and more arousal from erotic books and films at the time of ovulation. They also found that women initiated more sexual activity with their partners at the time of ovulation. Udry and Morris (1968) found a higher level of coitus during the follicular phase tending to reach a maximum during ovulation and then a decline in the luteal phase of the female cycle. However others have found peaks in sexual activity both before and after menstruation and at midcycle (Davis, 1929; McCance, Luff, & Widowson, 1937; Hart 1960). James (1971) reanalyzed the data from McCance, et al., Udry, and Morris, along with additional data that he collected and found a predictable peak in sexual behavior after menstruation, and only slight evidence of a midcycle peak. Spitz, Gold and Adams (1978) report similar findings. There also seems to be some evidence that oral contraceptives flatten out the peaks of high and low sexual activity during the female cycle (Udry & Morris, 1970; Udry, Morris & Waller, 1973).

The majority of the studies on hormonal cyclicity and human female sexual behavior use measures of frequency of coitus as a function of hormonal state in married women. In the animal literature however, the distinction is made between attractivity, proceptivity and receptivity (Beach, 1976). Attractiveness refers to the attractiveness of the female to males. Proceptivity is the female's use of active behavior to solicit approaches from males. Receptivity is the responsiveness of females to cues provided by males. Using frequency of intercourse confounds and obscures these underlying processes and places too much emphasis on sexual intercourse as the single measure of behavior. It seems that research on hormones and sexuality has adopted a product orientation rather than a process orientation. Human courtship is a process that occurs over time and is the result of the behavior of both interactants.

If we accept Perper's extended definition, then we can use the verbal, nonverbal or situational control strategies that the female uses during courtship to signal her continued interest in the male as a measure of proceptivity. Since during the private phase of courtship, males attempt to initiate increased levels of physical intimacy, the degree of physical intimacy that the female allows could be used as a measure of receptivity. Female cyclic hormonal states should influence their use of proceptive and receptive behavior during courtship. Increases in estrogen prior to ovulation should increase the motivation of the female to engage in sexual activity and be reflected her levels of autoerotic activity and subjective reports of desire. This we should see increases in proceptive behaviors, and increases in receptive behavior, as well as increases in reports of sex drive and autoeroticism that correspond to the surge of estrogen production prior to and during ovulation.

Note. Life rudely intevened during grad school, so at this point in time, I have not carried out this research. If you are interested in collaborating on finalizing the measures, collecting the data, performing the analyses and finishing writing it up for publication... let me know.

Overview

Two studies will be conducted to determine if the female's hormonal states affect her use of verbal, nonverbal, and situational proceptive strategies, her receptivity and her autoerotic status. Only females not using oral contraception will be included in the analysis. The first study will involve female's responses to a hypothetical male who is emotionally reciprocal. The second study will involve reports of actual behavior with their last dating partner.

Methods

Study 1 and 2

Prospective participants will be recruited through experiment sign-up sheets in the psychology department. To minimize self selection bias based on the content of the study, the posted description of the study will not include information regarding the sexual nature of the study. However, special care will be taken during the informed consent procedure to allow subjects to withdraw or choose to not answer questions which are disturbing to them. Participants will be assessed in groups with sufficient empty space in the classroom to allow complete privacy of each individual's responses. Computer scan forms will be used to record the majority of responses. Responses will be completely anonymous. No identifying information of any kind will be recorded with the participant's responses. Some demographic information will be collected but it will be insufficient to identify an individual's responses. After providing informed consent, each participant will complete two measures. The order of the two measures will be counterbalanced across subjects.

Study 1

The first measure will contain the vignette manipulation. Subjects will read a vignette which includes background information about a fictional relationship with a dating partner named Mark who is emotionally reciprocal. They will be asked to imagine that they are the female in the vignette and instructed to try to put themselves in a dating situation. The date will involve going out to dinner with Mark and then to his apartment to watch a movie. (Vignettes will be pretested prior to the initial study to make sure that subjects perceive the vignette characters in the intended manner). Subjects will complete a questionnaire developed from Perper & Weiss (1985) and McCormick & Jones, (1989) designed to assess proceptive and rejection strategies. We will ask them to indicate how likely they would be to perform behaviors including verbal, nonverbal and situational control during the private phase of courtship. They would be asked to rate the likelihood of engaging in physically intimate behaviors including sexual relations. They will also be asked to provide a description of at what point they would terminate physical intimacy and their rationale and methods of avoiding sexual relations while maintaining the relationship. The second measure will assess personal beliefs including measures of sexuality standards, autoeroticism, sex drive, religiosity, measures of affect related to sexuality and information on their menstrual cycles.

Study 2

The same procedure will be used in study two except that subjects will be asked to report on their behavior during their last date.

Plan for analyses

Study 1

First, separate principal components analysis, varimax rotation will be used to identify the number and composition of the factors which underlie the verbal, nonverbal, and situational control items, the physical intimacy items and the sex drive items. Once the dimensions which underlie the measures are identified, items will be summated to form scales which represent the dimensions and internal consistency reliability will be obtained.

The sample will be partitioned into three groups based on their hormonal status (HS) as indexed by their current menstrual cycle. The first group will include women who are currently in days 28 and days 1-8 of their cycle during which both estrogen and progesterone levels should be low. The second group will consist of women who are in day 9 through day 18 of their cycles. For this group estrogen should be high and progesterone should be low. The third group will contain women who are currently in days 19 to 27 of their cycle. In this group, estrogen levels should remain relatively high, but progesterone levels should also be high.

The summated scales will be used as the dependent measure in on factor ANOVA using the HS groups as the between groups factor. We should find a significant main effect for the HS groups. The low estrogen/low progesterone (LELP) group should report less proceptive behavior, less receptive behavior and lower sex drive and autoerotic behaviors than either the high estrogen/low progesterone (HELP) group or the high estrogen/high progesterone (HEHP) group. The HELP group should score higher than the HEHP group in their levels of proceptive and receptive behavior and in their reports of sex drive and autoeroticism. Post hoc comparisons will be used to support these assertions. If the predicted relationships are found an ancova will be used to determine if the relationship between hormonal states and proceptive and receptive behavior still holds when sex drive/autoeroticism is partialed out.

Study 2

For the second study confirmatory factor analysis will be used to confirm the proceptive, receptive and sex drive/autoeroticism dimensions found in the first study. Scales will be summated and used as the dependent measure in a one factor (HS grouping) ANCOVA controlling for levels of sex drive/autoeroticism. We should find the same pattern of results as in the first study. Next structural equation modeling will be used to test the proposed causal relationships between hormonal state, sex drive/autoeroticism, proceptive and receptive behaviors with the dating partner.

Estimated Sample Size from Power Calculations

Power analyses were used to estimate the required sample size for each design to obtain a power level of .8 as suggested by Cohen, (1977) and Keppel, (1991). In order to obtain the specified power level, we must estimate the expected effect size and specify the alpha level for each design. We will adopt the traditional alpha of .05 to control the probability of a committing a type one error. A small effect size (r < .3) was estimated from previous research which indicates that hormonal state does not exert a strong influence on human coital frequency. The estimated sample size to obtain power of .8 to detect the main effect for the between groups anova is 240 subjects.

References

Adams, D. B., Gold, A. R. & Burt, A. D. (1978). Rise in female initiated sexual activity at ovulation and its suppression by oral contraceptives. New England Journal of Medicine, 299, 1145-1150.

Arai, Y., & Gorski, R. A. (1968). Effects of anti-estrogens on steroid induced sexual receptivity in ovariectomized rats. Physiology and behavior, 3, 352-353.

Beach, F. A. (1976). Sexual attractivity, proceptivity, and receptivity in female mammal. Hormones and Behavior, 7, 105-138.

Beach, F.A., & Merari, A. (1970). Coital behavior in dogs: V. effects of estrogen and progesterone on mating and other forms of social behavior. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology, 70, 1-22.

Bermont, G., & Davidson, J. M. (1974). Biological basis of sexual behavior, NY: Harper & Row.

Carlson, N. R. (1986). Physiology of behavior, (3rd Ed). Boston: Allyn & Bacon, Inc.

Cohen, J. (1977). Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. New York, NY: Academic Press.

Daly, M., & Wilson, M., (1983). Sex evolution and behavior, (2nd Ed). Boston: PWS Publishers.

Davidson, J. M., Smith, E. R., Rodgers, C. H., & Bloch, G. J. (1968). Relative thresholds of behavioral and somatic responses to estrogen. Physiology and Behavior, 3, 227-229.

Davis, K. B. (1929). Factors in the sex life of 2,200 women, NY: Harper and Row.

Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. NY: D. Appleton and Co.

Durant, H. H. & Sanders, J. M. (1989). Sexual behavior and contraceptive risk taking among sexually active adolescent females. Journal of Adolescent Health Care, 10(1), 1-9.

Harris, B. A. (1991). Sexual beliefs, affect and behavior as a function of personal sexuality standards: A Multimethod Approach.

Hart. R. D. (1960). Monthly rhythm of libido in married women, British Medical Journal, 1, 1023-1024.

Herbert, J. (1978). Neuro-hormonal integration of sexual behavior in female primates. in Biological determinants of sexual behavior, J. B. Hutchinson (Ed). NY: John Wiley & Sons, pp 467-592.

James, W. H. (1971). The distribution of coitus within the human intermenstruum, Journal of Biosocial Sciences, 3, 159-171.

Kendrick, K. M., & Dixson, A. F. (1985). Effects of oestradiol 17B, progesterone and testosterone upon proceptivity and receptivity in ovariectomized common marmosets (Callithrix jacchus). Physiology and Behavior, 34(1), 123-128.

Keppel, G. (1991). Design and Analysis: A Researcher's Handbook (3rd Ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Leshner, A. I. (1978). An introduction to behavioral endocrinology NY: Oxford Univ Press.

Luttge. W.G., Hall, N.R., Wallis, C.J., & Campbell, J.C. (1975). Stimulation of male and female sexual behavior in gonadectomized rates with estrogen and androgen therapy and it's inhibition with concurrent anti-hormone therapy. Physiology and Behavior, 14, 839-946.

McCance, R. A., Luff, M. C., & Widdowson, E. E. (1937). Physical and emotional periodicity in women, Journal of Hygiene, 37, 571-611.

McCormick, N. B. (1979). Come-ons and put-offs: Unmarried students' strategies for having and avoiding sexual intercourse. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 4, 194-211.

McCormick & Jones (1989). Gender differences in nonverbal flirtation. Journal of Sex Education and Therapy, 15(4), 271-282.

Mitchell, G. (1981). Human sex differences: A primatologist's perspective, NY: Van Nostrand Reinholt Co.

Nadler, R. D., & Collins, D. C. (1984). Research on reproductive biology of gorillas. Zoo Biology, 3(1), 13-25.

Perper, T. (1985). Sex signals. The biology of love. Philadelphia, PA: ISI Press.

Perper T. & Weis D. (1987). Proceptive and rejective strategies of U.S. and Canadian college women. Journal of Sex Research, 23(4), 455-480.

Persky, H., Lief, H.I., Strauss, D., Miller, W.R, & O'Brien, C.P. (1978). Plasma testosterone levels and sexual behavior of couples. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 7, 157-173.

Spitz, C. J., Gold, A. R., & Adams, D. B. (1975). Cognitive and hormonal factors affecting coital frequency, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 4, 249-264.

Stribley, J. A., French, J. A., & Inglett, B. J. (1987). Mating patterns in the golden lion tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia): Continuous receptivity and concealed estrus. Folia Primatologica, 49(3-4), 137-150.

Udry, J. R., & Morris, N. M. (1968) Distribution of coitus in the menstrual cycle. Nature, 227, 593-596.

Udry, J. R., & Morris, N. M. (1970). The effect of contraceptive pills on the distribution of sexual activity in the menstrual cycle, Nature, 227, 502-503.

Udry, J. R., Morris, N. M., & Waller, L. (1973). Effects of contraceptive pills on sexual activity on the luteal phase of human menstrual cycle, Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2, 205-214.

Wallen, K. (1984). Periovulatory changes in female sexual behavior and patterns of ovarian steroid secretion in group-living rhesus monkeys. Hormones and Behavior, 18(4), 431-450.

Whalen, R. E, & Gorzalka, B. B. (1973). Effects of estrogen an antagonist on behavior and estrogen retention in neural and peripheral target tissues. Physiology and Behavior, 10, 35-40.

Young, W. C. (1941). Observations and experimental on mating behavior in female mammals, Quarterly Review of Biology, 16, 135-136, 311-335.