ORIGINAL ARTICLE Relative prevalence of different fetishes C Scorolli 1 , S Ghirlanda 1,2,3 , M Enquist 2,4 , S Zattoni 3 and EA Jannini 5 1 Department of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy; 2 Group for Interdisciplinary Cultural Research, Stockholm University, Sweden; 3 Faculty of Psychology, University of Bologna, Italy; 4 Zoology Institution, Stockholm University, Sweden and 5 Department of Experimental Medicine, L’Aquila University, L’Aquila, Italy The aim of this study was to estimate the relative frequency of Fetishes in a large sample of individuals. Using the Internet as a data source, we examined 381 discussion groups. We estimate, very conservatively, that at least 5000 individuals were targeted. The relative frequency of each preference category was estimated considering (a) the number of groups devoted to the category, (b) the number of individuals participating in the groups and (c) the number of messages exchanged. The three measures agree both parametrically (Cronbach’s a ¼ 0.91) and non-parametrically (Kendall’s W ¼ 0.94, Po0.01). Preferences for body parts or features and for objects usually associated with the body were most common (33 and 30%, respectively), followed by preferences for other people’s behavior (18%), own behavior (7%), social behavior (7%) and objects unrelated to the body (5%). Feet and objects associated with feet were the most common target of preferences. These findings provide the first large database in an area, where the knowledge is particularly scarce. International Journal of Impotence Research (2007) 19, 432–437; doi:10.1038/sj.ijir.3901547; published online 15 February 2007 Introduction Human sexuality is an interdisciplinary area where researchers from different fields such as medicine, biology, psychology, sociology and anthropology meet and, to some extent, compete to explain phenomena. 1–3 In particular, the expert in sexual medicine is frequently called to deal with sexual symptoms, such as erectile dysfunction or ejacula- tory disturbances, that can be directly or indirectly correlated with particular or unusual sexual inter- ests. For many reasons (the private aspect of sexual behavior, lack of strong theoretical models, lack of funding), however, it is difficult to gather data from large samples. This is especially true for rare sexual preferences and behaviors, that are often referred as ‘deviant’ or ‘bizarre’ and whose expression may be discouraged by society (in the scientific literature: ‘paraphilias’, ‘variant’ or ‘atypical’ preferences). As a result, efforts to explain rare sexual preferences and behaviors have been based on data from such sources as psychiatric patients, sex offenders and persons who have sought or have been referred to a therapist. 2,4 To date, there is little theoretical under- standing of why an object or a body part unrelated to functional sexual activity attracts so much attention as in fetishism. Although the available data may suggest some pathogenetic mechanisms, they are not sufficient to distinguish between inherited or en- vironmental origin of fetishism. Moreover, there is little empirical research attempting to estimate the relative frequency of atypical sexual preferences in the general population. Here, we present such a research in a large, selected population of English- speaking internet users. Methods Data source We gathered data from public access areas of the English-language section of Yahoo! groups, a large collections of Internet discussion groups (http:// groups.yahoo.com). By registering with the Yahoo! service, anyone is entitled to create discussion groups on any topic, provided no copyrighted material is posted and sexual or otherwise sensitive content is posted only to age-restricted sections of the site (see Yahoo!’s terms of service at http:// docs.yahoo.com/info/terms). Many groups relate to sexuality. The material posted to a group is often reserved to group members (membership is usually Received 13 June 2006; revised 30 December 2006; accepted 5 January 2007; published online 15 February 2007 Correspondence: Professor EA Jannini, Department of Experimental Medicine, University of L’Aquila, Via Vetoio, Bldg 2, Room A2/54, L’Aquila, AQ 67100, Italy. E-mail: jannini@univaq.it International Journal of Impotence Research (2007) 19, 432–437 & 2007 Nature Publishing Group All rights reserved 0955-9930/07 $30.00 www.nature.com/ijir