The valence of sex: Automatic affective associations in erotophilia and erotophobia

► Positive and negative sexual attitudes may impact automatic reactions to sex. ► A priming task and a measure of erotophobia-erotophilia were used to test this idea. ► Erotophilia facilitated links between sexual primes and positively-valenced targets. ► Erotophobia did not affect responses to sex primes and negatively-valenced targets. ► Automatic processing of valence of sex partly depends on affective responses to sex.