Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal Summary

Summary
The purpose of Adams, Wright, and Lohr’s (1996) article “Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal?” was to examine the effects of homosexual arousal in heterosexual men who identified as disliking homosexuals or being homophobic. The study that was conducted used 64 Caucasian heterosexual male participants ranging between the ages of 18-31. Each participant was tested to see if he identified as either homophobic or non homophobic and then was placed into their correlating groups. Each group was then shown three different tapes showing sexual acts that were heterosexual, male homosexual, and female homosexual while having their penile circumference monitored for changes throughout. The hypothesis being tested in this study was to see whether homophobic men would become more sexual aroused to the homosexual material than the non homophobic men and to test if homophobic men acted more aggressive then non homophobic men. The study confirmed that the homophobic men did act more aggressively and should more arousal to the homophobic material either without knowing or denying that they were.

Analysis

Two strengths that I found in this article that helped support the study being conducted were the test methods being used and the research into the term “homophobia” being used to describe the men who showed negative views towards homosexuals.

The test methods used in this study were an aggression test to sort each participant as either homophobic or non homophobic and then a visual test that would monitor the arousal of each participant. By using these testing methods, the researchers had a the best way of knowing how the participant thought he perceived homosexuals and how his body physically reacted to homosexual

cues.
The second strength in the article was the researcher’s closer look at the term “homophobia” also helped the viability of the study. Homophobia has been used to describe a fear of being in close range of homosexuals but has also adapted to mean the disliking homosexuals or to have a negative response to homosexual behaviors. Because the researchers took the time to address the controversy of the term and also addressing how the meaning has changed, they were able to clearly explain what homophobia meant in this study. The term “homophobia” in this study was meant to define the anger, aversion, or anxiety felt by someone when presented homosexual behaviors.
The two weaknesses I found in this article that did not support the study being conducted were the low amount of test subjects used and the lack of diversity in the test subjects. Because the study only used 64 participants, the data is doesn’t support the theory that homophobic men feel sexual arousal to homosexual activities and behaviors. If the study was able to pool more participants, the results would be much more concrete.
The second weakness I found in this article was the lack of diversity in the study participants. Using only Caucasian men may have affected the data from the study. It’s possible that African American men or Hispanic men may have reacted differently to the test being performed. This article had a very interesting theory on the behavior of homophobic men and their reaction to homosexual actions, but because the study did not have a larger or more diverse testing pool the data isn’t as reliable.