Viewing Sexual Desire as Stable Versus Fluid: The Impact of Implicit Beliefs on Women's Coping With Sexual Desire Problems

Our goal was to examine how implicit theories can be applied to understanding women's coping responses to sexual problems. The belief that sexual desire changes over time is a type of incremental theory, while the belief that sexual desire is stable is a type of entity theory (Dweck, 2012). We examined how different implicit theories of sexual desire influence how women cope with sexual desire challenges. Also, we sought to determine whether women's perceptions of experiencing a sexual desire challenge moderate the relationship between their implicit beliefs and their coping responses. We randomly assigned women to read an article designed to induce either an entity or incremental theory about sexual desire. We further asked them to indicate how true it is that they have experienced, or are likely to experience, a sexual desire problem (1 = not at all true to 4 = very true). They then completed a measure of coping with desire problems, the Modified Cope Inventory. Results from both studies showed that women primed with entity theories who expected to experience a sexual desire issue reported significantly more negative coping than women primed with incremental theories. Implications of this research and future directions are discussed.