School of Psychology and Life Sciences, Lusófona University, Lisbon, Portugal.
Research Center for Psychological Science, Faculty of Psychology, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal.
J Sex Marital Ther. 2022;48(6):607-627. doi: 10.1080/0092623X.2022.2035867. Epub 2022 Feb 15.
Little is known about specific intimacy dimensions' role in sexual function. In the current study, we aimed to gain more insight into how expression of feelings and sexual self-disclosure (a mediator) might potentially affect sexual functioning testing a theoretically based moderated mediation model, that uses gender as a moderator. A total of 661 participants, of which 211 were men (31,90%) and 450 were women (68,10%) aged 18-74 years involved in a monogamous committed relationship participated in the study. We used macro PROCESS 3.2 for IBM - SPSS to test simple mediation and moderated mediation models. The data revealed a significant overall effect of expression of feelings on sexual function, supporting that sexual self-disclosure mediates this relationship. We found that gender does not moderate either the relationship between expression of feelings and sexual self-disclosure nor the trajectory between sexual self-disclosure and sexual function. Our results highlight the importance of taking an interpersonal behavioral approach to sexual function, namely one that focuses on communication behaviors. However, these results need to be explored with clinical samples to understand their full potential for clinical interventions within a behavioral paradigm to partnered people's sexual problems.
关于特定亲密维度在性功能中的作用知之甚少。在本研究中，我们旨在更深入地了解情感表达和性自我表露（中介）如何可能影响性功能，检验一个基于理论的中介调节模型，该模型使用性别作为调节变量。共有 661 名参与者，其中 211 名男性（31.90%）和 450 名女性（68.10%）年龄在 18-74 岁之间，处于一夫一妻制的承诺关系中，参与了这项研究。我们使用 IBM-SPSS 的宏 PROCESS 3.2 来测试简单中介和调节中介模型。数据显示，情感表达对性功能有显著的总体影响，支持性自我表露中介了这种关系。我们发现，性别既不能调节情感表达和性自我表露之间的关系，也不能调节性自我表露和性功能之间的关系。我们的研究结果强调了采用人际行为方法研究性功能的重要性，即关注沟通行为。然而，这些结果需要在临床样本中进行探讨，以了解其在行为范式下对伴侣性问题进行临床干预的全部潜力。
