First, the fact that sexual sadism and masochism are part of a psychiatric classification system may still fuel stigmatizing presumptions eg, in a context of jurisdiction. Second, the fact that BDSM-related activities are classified as paraphilias implies that they are unusual or atypical; however, this stands in stark contrast with data showing that more than half of the general population has BDSM-themed fantasies. Typical BDSM-related fantasies, such as being dominated, bondage, or spanking, were found to be more common up to Some preliminary literature suggests an influence of several psychological factors and social influences driving an affinity with BDSM.
A single study scrutinized associations between personality traits and BDSM preferences.
Introduction
Moreover, BDSM practitioners differed in their attachment styles because they were less sensitive to rejection, more confident in their relationships, had lower need for approval, and were less anxiously attached compared with the non-BDSM participants. Most of these effects were driven by the female subsample of the BDSM practitioners. These preliminary findings, thus, may suggest an association between cluster B personality traits and BDSM interests, but this notion should be explored in future studies. Moreover, a recent meta-analysis on the prevalence of child sexual abuse in community and student samples showed that 7.
It should be noted that earlier research has shown that women who were sexually abused in childhood were more likely to report submission fantasies than those who were not. Future large-scale, preferably cross-nation research should further elucidate whether an association between childhood abuse and BDSM interests is actually present.
It can also be hypothesized that a report bias may exist, driving these preliminary associations, because it is possible that BDSM practitioners may communicate more openly about sexual boundaries and sexuality in general. The latter notion has not been investigated yet, so comparing the communication style between BDSM practitioners and non-BDSM control subjects may be of interest.
Moreover, because BDSM practitioners frequently emphasize consent, safety, and personal boundaries within BDSM play, 65 they may label certain behaviors more quickly as being sexually transgressive than non-practitioners from the general population. Further research should clarify the nature of this relationship. Many BDSM-oriented individuals became aware of their kink-themed interests at a relatively young age, that is, before the age of Similarly, Holvoet and colleagues 3 found that In a Finnish sample of mostly gay men, 9. Because these interests apparently are already present early in life, social contexts during childhood and adolescence eg, parenting style presumably largely influence affinity for BDSM practices.
Future research should dig deeper in the potential moderating role of parenting style and power disparity in the parental couple.
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Ample literature shows that BDSM practitioners are typically highly educated. In this line, they also had higher income levels than the general population. These findings suggest that there is a positive correlation between the intensity with which one practices BDSM and their education level. It could be suggested that individuals with higher education levels are attracted to the psychological dynamics of BDSM play and see it as an enrichment of their relationship or sexuality, but this should be clarified by future research.
It may also be that a participation bias exists, because more-educated BDSM practitioners may be more prone to participate in research or because they may have easier access to research projects through internet forums. Nonetheless, it should be noted that these findings are merely associations found between education level and BDSM interest and, thus, did not reflect causality. Future BDSM research could explore whether higher education levels may be linked to more liberal attitudes and beliefs or a more unrestricted sociosexual orientation.
This parallels the evolution in the social profile of the public BDSM community, because in the s and s, initial clubs were typically part of the gay leather scene. This also has significant advantages for research in the field, because it results in a vast increase in the accessibility of the population for research purposes and thereby strongly reduces study population selection bias. Moreover, within the community, BDSM play is more associated with long-term relationships, and some even indicate them as being unnecessary or inappropriate in short-term sexual encounters, 85 again pointing toward the bidirectional association between an emotional connection and BDSM play.
This interesting notion should be explored in future research.
Cross and Matheson 80 indicate that it is power that is at the core of BDSM interactions, rather than pain, bondage, and humiliation, which are merely tools or methods to achieve the mutual creation of a hierarchical status. As such, the exchange of power in an erotic context is the driving mechanism underlying sexual pleasure.
An important limitation of this approach is that it was a virtual interaction, not necessarily reflecting all processes involved in a real-life interaction. This notion mirrors the fact that women having sexual fantasies of forced sex often imagine minimal physical discomfort in those fantasies, 87 , 88 , 89 suggesting that it is the power dynamics rather than a masochistic mechanism driving these fantasies. Although, for some, BDSM is a form of leisure or a means to spice things up in the bedroom, 33 , 65 other practitioners will argue that BDSM is their sexual identity or orientation.
Some even go as far as to perpetually maintain their BDSM dynamics in their everyday lives. For example, a person identifying as gay will indicate that sexual orientation stands for who he or she essentially is. Up to now, very few studies focused on the biologic underpinnings of BDSM practice, but some indeed have investigated effects of gender, brain activity patterns, or associations with hormonal changes. Several studies looked into the association between the sex of the participant and BDSM role.
Women also demonstrate significantly higher interest in submissive sexual fantasies 16 and express a preference for a dominant man. From an evolutionary point of view, male assertiveness is a characteristic valued by women in their male potential partners, because it may have led to increased survival chances for women and children. To do so, they investigated the hypothesis that sexual arousal induced by hierarchical imbalance between a person and his or her partner reflects a mating strategy. They showed that, compared with control subjects, sexually dominant men and sexually submissive women perceived themselves as being more attractive and had more biological children.
This led the authors to conclude BDSM to be a successful mating strategy. In contemporary society, dominance is still primarily considered a masculine characteristic. Words referring to sex primed faster responses for submissive words in women, leading the authors to conclude that women implicitly associated sex with submission, an association not found in men.
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It was also demonstrated that many adolescent girls, but not boys, report assuming a submissive role during their first sexual experiences. Notably, Hawley and Hensley 92 also demonstrated high preference rates for submissive fantasies in some men, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity.
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The authors suggest differential between-gender mechanisms for these submissive fantasies. In women, interest in submission is presumably mainly driven by the need for nurturing and security, whereas, in men, this need is possibly more associated with the need to surrender to the will of another. The authors note that this might not be a strictly biological phenomenon and could potentially be explained, at least partially, by cultural changes over the years.
Possibly, in the BDSM community, acceptance toward more-fluid role positioning may have increased over time, although this notion should be investigated. It may also reflect a level of maturity needed to take on the dominant role and implement the responsibilities needed for the role. This finding was corroborated by Luo and Zhang, who showed that submissive women have lower differential amplitudes of several event-related potentials, compared with control subjects, when looking at pictures of women with painful and neutral facial expressions.
These reduced event-related potentials include the N1, P2, and long-latency potential. The N1 has been associated with the perception of threat, whereas the P2 has been linked to the degree of perceived pain in others.
In contrast, both masochists and non-BDSM control subjects reported equal levels of negative emotions while experiencing pain in everyday life. A single functional magnetic resonance imaging study investigated brain activity in masochists during the administration of painful laser stimuli while viewing body-related masochistic stimuli vs other, non-masochistic stimuli.
Compared with control subjects, masochistic participants reported reduced pain perception while viewing the masochistic images, which was mirrored by higher levels of positive arousal while watching the images. Interestingly, they had unaltered pain perception in other non-masochistic contexts. Brain imaging revealed that, in masochists, the functional connectivity of the parietal operculum to the left and right insulae, the central operculum, and the supramarginal gyrus is altered.
Activity of the insula region specifically has been associated with aversion.
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These results, thus, suggest that masochists tend to experience painful stimuli when framed in a masochistic social context as being less negative compared with control subjects. These aforementioned regions of the operculum have also been shown to be activated in non-BDSM participants when watching sexual video clips. The level of activation of these brain structures predicted sexual arousal induced by these videos. Male sex hormones, especially testosterone levels, are known to be associated with sexual activity and aggression in general, , but it should be noted that the association between testosterone and aggressive behavior is a complex one that remains to be elucidated.
Nonetheless, this association has been extrapolated to both sexual non-consensual sadism and sexual masochism. Contrasting to previous results, female but not male submissives had increased testosterone levels after BDSM play, whereas testosterone levels remained stable in dominants. The authors hypothesized the hormonal increase in female submissives to signify an aggressive response to the SM activities, but they also suggested that testosterone was associated with increases in positive mood, although the latter is less likely, given that increases in testosterone are more associated with depressive mood.
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Similarly, increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol have been associated with both sadistic and masochistic 66 , behaviors. Surprisingly, Klement and colleagues 66 , found that increased cortisol levels were inversely correlated with subjective stress levels, as well as negative affect.
Participants may have high pain tolerance levels and, thus, may not experience BDSM-related pain stimuli as particularly painful subjectively, although the body may have registered pain-related sensations.