PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGICAL RESEARCH OF SEX: MASTERS AND JOHNSON – HUMAN SEXUAL RESPONSE
Monday, February 7th, 2011The research that culminated in the publishing of Human Sexual Response was creative and thorough and was conducted with meticulous care. For almost the first two years, Masters and Johnson worked with a group of prostitutes, gathering interview data from individuals who had been in a unique position to observe many sexual response cycles in a large number of different individuals. Of the original 145 prostitutes, a small number (8 women and 3 men) were chosen for further anatomic and physiologic study. These individuals proved invaluable as subjects during the months of trial and error when the techniques and instruments to study the sexual response were being devised and refined. However, the results that came out of their work with these prostitutes were not included in the final report. Masters and Johnson have described this group as having “migratory tendencies,” that is, they frequently moved from place to place, which made it difficult if not impossible to obtain detailed response patterns over a long period of time. More importantly, this group had a high incidence of pathology of the sexual and pelvic organs, making the group unsuitable for research into normal sexual functioning.
The final subjects studied by Masters and Johnson were all volunteers, many from the university community. Subjects were expertly screened to weed out those who were only “thrill seekers” or who had volunteered for other inappropriate reasons. The remaining volunteers were all paid for their time spent in the laboratory. A total of 382 women, ranging in age from 18 to 78 years, and 312 men, aged 21 to 89 years, actively participated to some extent in the project. Included were both married couples and unmarried singles.
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