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

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