Does Empathy Make Us Orgasmic or Do Orgasms Give Us Empathy?

A paper published this month in the Journal of Adolescent Health turns our attention to a much under researched area of sexual health; pleasure. Specifically the authors, Adena Galinsky and Freya Sonenstein from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health used data collected by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, and examined associations between individual reporting on sexual pleasure and self-reports of autonomy, self-esteem, and empathy.

The researchers point o...