Sexual Excitation and Inhibition Moderate the Strength of Concordance Between Paraphilic Interests and Behaviors

The concordance between paraphilic interest and behavior is moderate to strong in previous studies. In the present study, we examined whether sexual excitation (SE) and sexual inhibition (SI) moderate the concordance between paraphilic interest and behavior, across several paraphilic themes. We expected that stronger concordance would be found at high levels of SE and weaker concordance would be found at high levels of SI, for both men and women. We expected stronger effects when high levels of SE are combined with low levels of SI and when low levels of SE are combined with high levels of SI, for both genders. To test this, we sampled 219 men and 351 women (<i>M</i>_age = 28.42, <i>SD</i>_age = 10.58) and conducted moderated moderation analyses with bootstrapping, separately for each gender and paraphilic theme. Consistent with our hypotheses, for paraphilic themes where SE was a significant moderator, the concordance between paraphilic interest and behavior was stronger at higher levels of SE. In contrast, for themes moderated by SI, the concordance was weaker at higher levels of SI. Sexual excitation and sexual inhibition only moderated concordance between paraphilic interest and behavior for masochism and voyeurism in women, in the expected direction: the highest concordance was observed at higher SE/lower SI and the lowest concordance was observed at lower SE/higher SI. SE and SI moderated concordance between paraphilic interest and behavior across several different paraphilic themes for men and women, suggesting that different sexuality traits may be involved across genders and across themes.