Deviant Sexual Behavior

Abstract

Criminal record, personal history, social-sexual competence, and physiological responses to erotic stimuli were examined in incarcerated pedophiles, hebephiles, and rapists. There were significant differences among groups in criminal and personal background; in particular, pedophiles tended to be older, more poorly educated, more likely to be unmarried, and less frequently involved in nonsexual crime. Social and social-sexual inadequacy was common to all groups, reflected in under-assertiveness, low self-esteem, and negative sexual attitudes. Rapists and hebephiles both responded maximally to adults as sexual partners, and both responded more to cues for consensual sex than to cues for rape. Thus it appears that deviant sexual arousal is a factor in deviant sexual behavior only in the case of pedophiles.