Alessandro Demichelis

As state-of-art technology can create artificial images that are indistinguishable from real ones, it is urgent to understand whether believing that a picture is real or not has some import over affective phenomena such as sexual arousal. Thus, in two pre-registered online studies, we tested whether 60 images depicting models in underwear elicited higher self-reported sexual arousal when believed to be (N = 57) or presented as (N = 108) real photographs as opposed to artificially generated. In both cases, Realness correlated with significantly higher scores on self-reported sexual arousal. Consistently with the literature on downregulation of emotional response to fictional works, our result indicates that sexual images that are perceived to be fake are less arousing than those believed to portray real people.

Precision Medicine, Personalized Medicine, Stratified Medicine, Lifestyle Medicine: these are all names that have been given to a new medical approach, that overcomes the limitations of the one-size-fits-all approach to pharmacotherapy by grounding it in the specific genetic markup of a given individual. Albeit these terms are sometimes used as synonyms, they mark important conceptual and historical differences. The gradual modification of the meaning carried by each term over the last 30 years can lead to confusion and conceptual opacity, especially in the lay public. The unfulfilled promises of earlier versions of this approach in terms of lack of individual empowerment and tangible clinical and economic benefits may foster a sense of disillusion and mistrust. Moreover, recent technological advancements, such as wearable healthcare devices, offer a tool to exploit those feelings commercially. This paper claims that such a situation could lead to the rise of a phenomenon akin to Vaccine Hesitancy, which we call Precision Medicine Hesitancy. Such an emergence carries the risk of undermining decades of collective efforts toward a redefinition of clinical practices. It is a danger of which we should be wary, and that should be prevented.