Arousal by Any Other Name? Probing the Specificity of Sexual Arousal in Men’s Cue-Based Judgments of Potential Flirt Partners

Interpreting whether someone is showing romantic or sexual interest can be challenging, particularly when cues are ambiguous or when attention is influenced by visceral states such as physiological or emotional arousal. Building on previous findings linking sexual arousal to men’s overreliance on global cues (OGC) when assessing women’s flirtatious intent, the present preregistered online study examined whether a similar cue-based judgment bias would emerge under nonsexual arousal. Using a key-press paradigm, heterosexual men (N = 275) completed a two-stage selection task in which they chose which of two women appeared more likely to be flirting with them. Stimuli were drawn from a validated image set and varied in global sexual (clothing style) and specific affective (facial expression) cues. Cue combinations were either congruent, potentially facilitating selection, or incongruent, thereby increasing selection difficulty. Between the two measurements, participants listened to a vividly narrated audio recording designed to elicit positively valenced nonsexual arousal. Reaction time (RT) and error rate (ER) served as behavioral indicators of OGC. Consistent with previous research, participants showed longer RTs and higher ERs in incongruent compared to congruent trials, indicating higher selection difficulty in ambiguous contexts. However, nonsexual arousal did not reproduce the pronounced behavioral response pattern that had been observed under sexual arousal. The findings suggest that sexual arousal exerts unique effects on cue weighting in social judgments, highlighting the importance of specifying boundary conditions under which arousal alters cognitive processing.