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Erick Janssen, Ph.D.
Senior Scientist |
I am a Senior Scientist and the Director of Education and Research Training at The Kinsey Institute and an adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University. I joined The Kinsey Institute in the Fall of 1995. Prior to that I worked at the Department of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
My research interests include the psychophysiology of sexual desire and arousal, individual differences in sexual excitation and inhibition, the effects of mood and emotions on sexual response and decision making, and sexuality in close relationships.
Broadly speaking, in my research I aim to contribute to our understanding of how processes relevant to sexual desire and arousal - both at the individual level and in interactions with others - influence the sexual experiences, decisions, and behaviors of men and women.
My research focuses on questions regarding the determinants of sexual risk taking, sexual dysfunction, sexual aggression, sexual compulsivity, and sexual satisfaction, among other topics, and in approaching my research questions, I employ questionnaire, interview, focus group, daily diary, experimental, observational, and psychophysiological methods.
I collaborate with researchers in Canada, Israel, Portugal, Sweden, Italy, and the Netherlands, and I have helped several of my colleagues set up a psychophysiological laboratory. With my colleagues, I have been the recipient of several awards, including twice the Hugo Beigel Award (2001 and 2003) for best article in the Journal of Sex Research, and more recently, the equally prestigious Reiss Theory Award (2009) for the best publication in the field of sex research in which theoretical explanations of human sexual attitudes and behaviors are developed.
A large part of my research is supported through grants from the National Institutes of Health (e.g., NICHD, NIAAA, NIDDK) and ongoing projects focus on, among others, the role of conditioning and self-regulation in sexual compulsivity, the role of emotional dysregulation in sexual aggression, the development of new psychophysiological measures of sexual arousal in women, and mechanisms of condom-use associated erection loss.
I was the 2010-2011 president of the International Academy of Sex Research (IASR) and I am the founder and listmanager of SexLab, an international network of researchers in the field of sexual psychophysiology. Also, I organized the first conference ever on sexual psychophysiology, which resulted in the publication of the The Psychophysiology of Sex.
You can read more about my research on the Kinsey Institute's website, in several of the Kinsey Institute's newsletters, and in these 2004 and 2007 New York Times articles (pdf1 / pdf2).
© Last Modified Spring 2012