Of all comparative groups, the offenders vs. adults were least responsive to the sight or thought of the opposite sex, a full two fifths reporting little or no sexual arousal from such stimuli. Some of their unresponsiveness may be attributed to the fact that they had, as a group, one of the lowest intelligence records. Only a small number, 17 per cent, reported strong arousal. They rank low again in terms of response to members of the same sex, some 94 per cent claiming they had none. Only one group had fewer men who reported sexual arousal from viewing pornography: three fifths of the offenders vs. adults professed little or no response to this material. Nevertheless, they rank third, with 14 per cent, in proportion of men who were sexually aroused by sadomasochistic pictures or stories—a finding not in agreement with their reported masturbatory fantasy or dream content. Since we usually phrased our question, “Do stories of rape, torture, or violence arouse you sexually?” it may be that the rape portion of the question appealed to some of these offenders, many of whom have a streak of “machismo” in their sexual philosophy anyway. We suspect, but cannot prove, that had we asked solely about torture, whipping, and bondage, we would have received considerably fewer affirmative replies from the members of this group.
The general lack of response to anything save physical contact is to be expected in a group with high frequencies of sociosexual activity (i.e., they tend to be satiated), limited intelligence, and little education (i.e., they tend to be unimaginative and direct in their outlook). We have found that males of the lowest socioeconomic level generally require rather concrete stimuli with the prospect of immediate reward in order to evoke a sexual response. Pictures, stories, or even the sight of an unavailable living female mean little to these men, who are empirical in the extreme. Our offenders vs. adults and, to a somewhat lesser degree, the offenders vs. minors, contain a large proportion of individuals from this stratum of society.
The offenders vs. adults tie with the control group in having the smallest number (6 per cent) of alcoholics. They were not against alcohol, for we find that in both groups only about one sixth of them abstained from its use. This is not an unusual proportion of teetotalers.
There were also very few drug users in the group. Only 9 per cent, the third smallest percentage of any of our comparative groups, had used any drug for euphoric purposes.
Neither were they, as a group, gamblers: 56 per cent, the second largest percentage, had never gambled and very few (25 per cent) had what we call social gambling in their histories. However, a moderate proportion, about one sixth, had gambled seriously in the sense of deriving an appreciable part of their income in this way.
*72\161\2*
