Studies among people struggling with hypersexual behavior commonly report that shame needs to be addressed when treating this population. These studies theoretically distinguish that it is shame and not guilt that exacerbates hypersexual behavior, yet no study to date has demonstrated this difference empirically. This observation led to the current investigation in which a sample (N = 177) of people seeking treatment for pornography use anonymously filledout measures of hypersexuality, shame-proneness, guilt-proneness, and motivation to change unwanted behavior. A hypothetical path model of the constructs was analyzed yielding significant positive relationships between shame-proneness and hypersexuality as well as guiltproneness and motivation to change. The data support previous findings that shame is active among people seeking treatment for hypersexual behavior. This study adds an additional element to the story by empirically demonstrating that shame and guilt have opposing relationships with hypersexuality and motivation for change.

Patients seeking help for hypersexual behavior often exhibit features of impulsivity, cognitive rigidity, poor judgment, deficits in emotion regulation, and excessive preoccupation with sex. Some of these characteristics are also common among patients presenting with neurological pathology associated with executive dysfunction. These observations led to the current investigation in which differences across scores on objective neuropsychological tests of executive functioning were explored in a group of hypersexual male patients (n = 30) compared with a non-hypersexual community sample (n = 30) of men. Using multivariate statistics, differences between the groups were examined yielding significant differences on measures of hypersexuality. However, the groups failed to exhibit significant differences across neuropsychological tests of executive functioning. These results contradict a previous finding of executive deficits among hypersexual men measured by self-report. These findings are discussed as they pertain to conceptualizations of hypersexual populations and possible implications for future research.