As humans we are naturally programmed to desire sex; however, sex comes at a cost. Our exposure to sexual stimuli influences our behavior, sexual permissiveness, relationship initiation processing, self-sexualization, and our conscious and unconscious processing of sexual signals. Social media and sex collide in today's society as we unknowingly become victims of an implicit memory effect called priming. Exposure to a specific stimulus, for example, an individual who is exposed to multiple sexual ads followed by sexualized subliminal words or phrases when accessing someone's Facebook profile page, may be more susceptible to associating the Facebook user with a sexual way or person. Previous research has established that social behavior is largely driven by how we think about ourselves and others, leading to the concept (sex-priming) that exposure to sexual stimuli changes the way men and women perceive themselves, and therefore it should also influence how they behave and their mental representations of sexuality (Hundhammer & Mussweiler, 2012). The priming process is a fleeting and indirect exposure to a social stimulus that leads to a subsequent outcome of; simple exposure to socially relevant stimuli facilitates or triggers a series of impressions, judgments, goals, and actions, most often outside of people's conscious state of intention or awareness (Molden, 2014). The main objective of this study is to analyze whether sexual priming of our participants on an individual's Facebook profile page will have an effect on their perception of the actual Facebook user. In short, if the participant is exposed to controlled stimuli before knowing who the actual Facebook user is, a misperception of the user will be formed before being informed of the truth. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essay The development of sexual priming depends on exposure to supraliminally and subliminally presented sexual cues that demonstrate changes in both affect and motivation for sexual cues presented outside of one's conscious awareness (Gillath & Collins, 2015). According to Gillath and Collins, exposure to subliminal cues very often leads to opposite results than when a stimulus is consciously provided. Social issues such as sex, relationships and the modern family hover in our subconscious and work to influence our mental state during consciousness. They concluded that unconscious stimuli lead to increased motivation to have sex, however, various factors such as sexual orientation, sexual desire, sexual strategies or different life experiences influence their behavior which is shaped not only by people's motivation but also by different environmental conditions that facilitate different trajectories that lead to potentially different effects on someone's reaction to sexual priming. In a similar study conducted by Hundhammer and Mussweiler (2012), found that the difference between the mental representation of both male and female allows a person's self-perception to create consistency with gender stereotypes, which results in influences prominent on social and sexual behavior in a complex of gender stereotypes. Sexuality is something that drastically influences the importance of any gender, leading to the display of different behaviors for men and women. Social media can heavily influence gender differences in sexuality, classifying females and.
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