Tell Me More

How much sway does sex have over what we keep secret? We ask Gurit Birnbaum, a psychologist at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, whose experiments showed that erotic imagery—even flashed subliminally—stimulates people to open up to potential dates about embarrassing memories.

A: Sexual desire is a visceral gauge of romantic compatibility and motivates efforts to deepen a relationship. In our experiments, we found that activating the sexual drive of participants with photos and video could encourage the use of one strategy for becoming closer to potential partners: self-disclosure. In everyday life, the attractiveness of a potential partner or the sexy ambience of a first date may also make you more talkative. Of course, self-disclosure should be reciprocal and gradual: Exposing too much, too soon may deter the other person. And if sexual arousal unleashes your inhibitions, you may find yourself disclosing information you did not mean to—and regretting it later.