Human sexuality is strange and always has been. The things that get people hot are usually the last things they’d admit to, and “I have no idea why this does it for me” is a more common internal monologue than anyone lets on.
Psychology has been catching up, though. Much of what seems “strange” on the surface has a pretty logical explanation underneath. Here are five of them.
Scarousal: Being Turned On by Fear
There’s a reason horror movie dates became a cliché. Research going back to a 1974 study by Dutton and Aron showed that men who crossed a terrifying suspension bridge were significantly more likely to call an attractive woman they’d met there afterward—compared to men who crossed a stable, boring bridge. The explanation is the misattribution of arousal: fear and sexual excitement produce nearly identical physiological states.
“This physiological state has a lot of parallels to the way our bodies feel when we’re sexually excited,” Dr. Justin Lehmiller of the Kinsey Institute explained. “It’s therefore possible that our brains are sometimes misinterpreting fear as sexual arousal.” A 2024 Grindr survey found 82% of users reported horror movies cause them sexual arousal. The brain isn’t great at labeling its own states.
Voices
Being attracted to someone’s voice has a clinical name: auralism. Research consistently finds that people with attractive voices are perceived as more dominant, more sexually experienced, and more desirable, and studies at the University of Albany found that voice attractiveness actually predicts sexual behavior.
Studies have also found that people unconsciously lower their voices when speaking to someone they find attractive, meaning the body is already flirting before conscious thought gets involved. Voice pitch broadcasts biological information—body size, testosterone, reproductive fitness—which is why certain voices can turn people on. Barry White built a career on this.
Intelligence
Sapiosexuality, sexual attraction to intelligence, has been validated as a measurable psychological construct. Research published in the journal Intelligence by Gilles Gignac at the University of Western Australia found that a meaningful segment of the population is specifically, sexually aroused by a brilliant mind, independently of physical attraction.
Evolutionary psychology has a theory for this too: intelligence signals problem-solving ability, higher social status, and genetic fitness—all things humans have been selecting for a very long time. Being turned on by someone who’s clearly smarter than everyone else in the room is, by this reading, extremely rational behavior.
Being Watched
The desire to be seen—specifically, to be watched during sex—is way more common than people let on. A large Swedish population survey found that around 3.1% of men and 0.4% of women reported exhibitionistic behavior, but researchers note the actual number experiencing exhibitionistic urges without acting on them is considerably higher.
The psychology behind it involves validation, power, and the specific quality of being the object of someone’s undivided, undeniable attention. As one clinical analysis put it, being watched by someone visibly aroused by what they see “communicates something that words alone can’t.” The audience changes how you inhabit your body, and for a lot of people, that change is exactly what they love.
Erotic Humiliation
This one makes people the most uncomfortable to discuss, which is probably why the psychology behind it is so underexplored. Psychologist Roy Baumeister’s foundational research on masochism proposed that the appeal of consensual humiliation is rooted in what he called “escaping the self”—the desire to temporarily shed identity, responsibility, and self-consciousness.
For high achievers, chronic overthinkers, and people who are always in control, the appeal of giving that up completely isn’t crazy. Clinical art-based sex and trauma therapist Neha Bhat describes erotic humiliation as “the consensual use of psychological humiliation in a sexual context,” in which the submissive partner gains arousal from the powerful, mixed experience of being demeaned by someone they trust entirely. The taboo is the point. The trust is what makes it sexy.
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