Procedure
Participants will be told that the purpose of this study is to better understand the sources of information that people make comparisons to regarding sexual pleasure. Participants will first be asked to fill out a short questionnaire that assess demographic information, followed by a few relationship and personality scales (see Instruments file). Then participants will be asked to indicate, from a list of possible sources of information, which sources they have used in the past, how satisfied and confident they were in the information they received, and whether they compare their experiences to the information from each source they selected.
Then, participants will be asked to imagine a scenario in which they seek out information regarding sexual pleasure from a particular source (they will be randomly assigned to either internet, friends, or pornography), and compare their experiences to that source, where the direction (they will be randomly assigned to either an upward or downward comparison) and source of comparison are manipulated. To reinforce the source and direction of comparison, participants will be asked to provide 3 reasons as to why they might expect that comparison to be true (e.g. 3 reasons why information from the internet may indicate that other's experiences are consistently more pleasurable than theirs).
Finally, participants will then be asked to respond to pleasure, sexual satisfaction, and investment scales. In addition, attention and instruction checks will be included throughout to ensure participants were paying attention throughout the surveys and that they understood the instructions.
Please see the Instruments file for a list of all study materials.