Social Psychology 2_Social side of sex

Educational Psychology
Social Side of Sex
Higher National Diploma in Psychology
Department of Developmental and Cognitive Psychology
Kumari Karandawala
BA Psychology (Hons) (US)
MSc.(MSSW) In Social Enterprise Management
and International Social Work / Development

Learning Content
• Sex and Culture – (Culture and Nature)
• Inconsistency and Erotic Plasticity
• Sex and Pro-Social behaviors
• Sex and Aggression
• Theories of Sexuality
• Social factors that determine Sexual
Preferences
• Sex and Prejudice

Sex and Culture
• How nature made us  the limits to the
power of socialization and upbringing.
• Eg. The story of “Brenda” who was a Bruce at
birth, who was changed to become a “Brenda”
and who changed back into being a guy
named David…
• Limits to the power of culture. People are
predisposed to learning some things more
than others

The story of David Peter Reimer…an
excerpt
• Reimer's account, written with John Colapinto two decades later, described
how—contrary to Money's reports—when living as Brenda, Reimer did not
identify as a girl. He was ostracized and bullied by peers, and neither frilly
dresses (which he was forced to wear during frigid Winnipeg winters) nor
female hormones made him feel female. By the age of 13, Reimer was
experiencing suicidal depression, and told his parents he would commit
suicide if they made him see John Money again. In 1980, Reimer's parents
told him the truth about his gender reassignment, following advice from
Reimer's endocrinologist and psychiatrist. At 14, Reimer decided to assume
a male gender identity, calling himself David. By 1997, Reimer had
undergone treatment to reverse the reassignment, including testosterone
injections, a double mastectomy, and two phalloplasty operations. On
September 22, 1990, he married Jane Fontaine and became a stepfather to
her three children.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

The story of David…
• His case came to international attention in 1997 when he told his story to Milton
Diamond, an academic sexologist who persuaded Reimer to allow him to report
the outcome in order to dissuade physicians from treating other infants
similarly.[2] Soon after, Reimer went public with his story, and John Colapinto
published a widely disseminated and influential account in Rolling Stone magazine
in December 1997.[6] They went on to elaborate the story in the book As Nature
Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl.[4]
Death
• In addition to his lifelong difficult relationship with his parents, Reimer had to deal
with unemployment and the death of his brother Brian from an overdose of
antidepressants in 2002. On May 2, 2004, his wife Jane told him she wanted to
separate. On the morning of May 5, 2004, Reimer drove to a grocery store's
parking lot, and committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a sawed-
off shotgun.[7] He was 38 years old.
• Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer

The moral of the story…
• Contrary to psychologist John Money’s gender
socialization theory(s), Bruce who was socialized
as a girl nevertheless had the urgings for being a
boy and no amount of gender socialization could
or would change that.
• This case and other similar cases point to the bio-
chemical make-up of human beings in sexual
identity and that the gender differences between
male and female are partly innate.

The moral of the story…
• There are limits to how much can be
accomplished by teaching, upbringing, and
other aspects of socialization.
• If gender identity were entirely a matter of
learning, then “Brenda” would have been a
normal girl.

A note on Evolution and doing what is
natural…
• Mating and Offspring:
• Biologists shifted emphasis from survival to
reproduction  producing babies who survive to
reproduce their own babies
• Evolutionary theory concentrated on gender and
sex;
-gender  refers to the difference between
male and female,
-Sex  refers to sexuality including intercourse

Evolution Theory says…
• Men more likely to want more sex partners than
women want
• A woman can only have one full-term pregnancy
in a year no matter how many men she sleeps
with but men can father dozens of children each
year if he has sex with many women
• A woman’s children are more likely to survive to
adulthood if cared for by two parents than the
mother alone
• What’s the Implication?

CULTURE
• TERM originally referred to a system of
farming  agriculture
• Social Scientists eventually began to use the
term to refer to what a large group of people
have in common  encompasses language,
values, food preferences, a style of
government, a place and a shared sense of
connection and historical achievements of
countrymen.

CULTURE is…
• An information-based system, involving both
shared understandings and praxis, that allows
groups of people to live together in an
organized fashion and to satisfy their
biological and perhaps other needs.
• Source: Culture and Nature chapter, Baumeister & Bushman
(2008), Social Psychology & Human Nature

Food and Sex
• Humans have developed cultural systems
around food and sex  rituals
• What are some of these rituals that are
cultural leading to anthropological AND
historical and traditional roots?*
• Many topics that social psychologists study
such as attitudes, prejudice, self-control, and
aggression have implications for eating and
sex.

Food and Sex
• Food and sex rituals have similarities and
differences between human beings and other
animals…
• From all species, only humans go on diets, have
elaborate systems of etiquette and able manners,
cook their food, experiment with recipes, and
forego specific foods
• Humans feel sexual desire and exhibit standard
patterns of gender differences in sexuality, such
as that females are more selective than males
about possible sex partners.

Sex and Culture…
• Humans approach sexuality in a way that reflects
the extensive influence of culture:
• People have norms and even formal laws that
regulate sexual behavior, they worry about their
sexual reputations, feel anxiety about performing
correctly, consult sex therapists and advice
columns to improve their sex lives, they typically
look for very private settings in which to have sex
, and sometimes cultivate particular forms of
sexual activity such as phone sex or shoe fetishes.

Sex and Culture: Nature or Culture?
• Debate on whether current practices of sex as a result
of nature and evolution or as a result of cultural
constructs.
Argument for Nature:
-in all cultures for example men desire greater number
of sexual partners
- Sex is also the main, if not ONLY way to procreate
-Same basic sex practices are known to most cultures.
Eg. Sex manuals from ancient China covered almost all
techniques as a current day sex manual (Tannahill, 1980).

• Argument for Culture:
- All known cultures have rules about sex
- All cultures know that sex leads to
pregnancies; pregnancy prevention practices are
universal
- Prostitution is found in all large cultures
(though aspects such as if legalized or not and
costs differ)

• Cultural differences in sex:
- Guam – women cannot marry if they are virgins
- Turkey – women are expected to be virgins at marriage
(until recently medical exams to confirm virginity)
- Indonesia – Law prohibits masturbation and beheads those
who break this law
- Lebanon – Men who have sex with male animals face the
death penalty whereas sex with female animals is
tolerated(!)
- New Guinea – Normal for male-male sex before marriage;
after marriage man is expected to stop all homosexual
activity and be with wife.

Plenty of differences within cultures as well:
In the US
– people who reach their 30th birthday and who
are still virgins where others have had sex with
about a dozen by age 15
-People go through their entire life only having
one partner and furthermore only practicing
one position, the missionary position. **

~Attitudes, Beliefs, and Consistency~
Background to Inconsistency and Erotic Plasticity…
Attitudes ~ “The concept of the attitude is probably the most
distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary American
social psychology.” -- Gordon W. Allport, 1935
• What do we mean when we say attitude?
Eg. Dr. Jack Kevorkian. He went to prison because of
his attitudes and his actions based on those attitudes.*
• Why are attitudes important?
- Attitudes reflect people’s ideas about life. Ideas in
turn determine how people will act.

Attitudes Vs. Beliefs
• What are beliefs?
Attitudes differ from Beliefs.
- Beliefs are pieces of information (you have) about
something, they are your facts or opinions.
- Attitudes are global evaluations* toward some object
or issue (eg. You like or dislike something, you are in
favor of or opposed to some position).
- Eg. If you think that a certain person is president or
that it is cloudy  that is your belief
- If you like the person who is the president or the
clouds  that is your attitude

Attitudes Vs. Beliefs
• Attitudes are for choosing
• Beliefs are for explaining
• Both serve interpersonal functions
• Attitudes are essentially a matter of liking Vs.
disliking things in the social world *
• Attitudes help us navigate through the
complicated world of society and culture**
- why? CREATES BONDS for RELATING.

What is Consistency?
• ~Consistency is an important issue for beliefs
just as much as for attitudes. You want your
beliefs about the world to be consistent with
the world.~

Inconsistency and Erotic Plasticity
A-B INCONSISTENCY
• The A-B problem. The problem of inconsistency between
attitudes (A) and behaviors (B)
• Wicker (1969) pointed out that existing data showed that
people often acted in ways that went against what they
had said their attitudes were.
• Social psychologists were challenged to think more
productively of how to study attitudes and behaviors.
• THE FACT? Consistency is there to be found but not as
simple or as prevalent as assumed.

What is Erotic Plasticity?
• is the degree to which one's sex drive can be
changed by cultural or social factors
• Someone has "high erotic plasticity" when their sex
drives can be affected by situational, social and
cultural influences, whereas someone with “low
erotic plasticity” has a sex drive that is relatively rigid
and unsusceptible to change.
Since social psychologist Roy Baumeister coined the
term in 2000, only two studies directly assessing
erotic plasticity have been completed as of 2010.

• The female erotic plasticity hypothesis states
that women have higher erotic plasticity than
men, and therefore their sex drives are more
socially flexible and responsive than those of
men (factors such as religion, culture and
education have a greater affect on women’s
sexual behaviors).
• Men, on the other hand, remain relatively rigid
after puberty but can still be affected by these
factors.

Inconsistency and Erotic Plasticity –
The question of sex
In terms of A-B inconsistency:
• Ample room for contradictions between
people’s attitudes and their actual behaviors
• One prediction is that female sexuality is more
open to influence from social, cultural, and
situational factors than male sexuality
• This means that men’s attitudes predict their
sexual behavior better than women’s.
• The reason? 

The question of sex
•  The reason is not that women are generally
inconsistent but rather that women’s sexual
responses are specific to the person, the
situation and what it means to them*
• In contrast men tend to like and dislike the
same things day in and day out, regardless of
specific situations therefore their general
attitudes tend to predict their behavior much
better.

The question of sex
• Where attitudes and behaviors between men and
women diverge:
• -Same – gender sexual activity: A major survey in
1990s asked people about their attitudes toward
homosexual activity * AND about their actual
behavior**.
• Findings: For men, the 2 questions overlapped; A
majority, 85 %, of those who favored homosexual
activity had engaged in it during the past year. In
contrast less than half of the women who liked it
had engaged in it recently.

What does this mean?
• Attitudes and behaviors were much less
consistent for women.
• Gender gap in consistency in heterosexual
behavior too:
• Studies show that women engage in sexual
activity, of which they do not approve more than
men.
• Women’s behavior consistency is only 11 % as
opposed to men’s consistency of behavior which
was 33% in regard to being faithful to hour
partner if you have a committed relationship…

What does this mean?
• Women’s behavior measured against their
attitudes are unpredictable
• One solution to the A-B problem is to measure
very specific attitudes…however this does not
resolve the gender issue
• For example, more women are likely to have
sex even if they did not feel the desire for sex
(to please a partner who is feeling amorous).
•  women like to please and to not hurt…

Sex and Pro-social behaviors: Prequel
What is Prosocial Behavior?
• defined as doing something that is good for other
people or for society as a whole.
• Prosocial behavior includes behavior that respects
others or allows society to operate
• Prosocial behavior builds relationships –opposite of
antisocial behavior – means doing something bad for
others or for society. Antisocial behavior destroys
relationships.
Eg. The story of Oskar Schindler 1908 – 1974.
~ “He who saves one life, it is as if he saves the world
entire”~

Difference between Prosocial and
Altruism…Prequel
• Altruism:
-Social psychologists’ debate  are people
basically good or selfish?
Argument: if one donates money to a charity or
help a needy victim because it makes one feel good
to do so, then isn’t that really being selfish and self-
serving?  Is genuine altruism possible?
SPs split on this issue. Some helping is egotistical
and some help is…well helpful even when people
could have gone without helping.

Prosocial behavior encompasses the
following behaviors…
• Reciprocation
• Fairness
• Commons Dilemma – Tragedy of the Commons
(behavior that produces tragic results for the
group eg. Fisherman’s Problem)
• Hoarding – (Common Good lasts longer when
individuals are identified and provided feedback
re food shortages and stocks. When people feel
anonymous they are more likely to engage in
selfishness.)

• Cooperation
• Forgiveness
• Obedience
• Conformity
• Evolutionary benefits in helping – (kin
selection where you are more likely to help
someone who shares ½ of your genes like a
sibling as opposed to someone you share
fewer genes with)

Sex and Prosocial Behavior: Helping,
Sex and Friends
• Short, or Long-term sexual relationships
depend on help from friends and relatives in
multiple ways.
• Less than half of people met their sex partners
or marriage partners by introducing
themselves (Laumann et al., 1994)
• However, self-introductions more likely to lead
to  short-term affairs
• On the other hand…

Sex and Friends
• …family members were responsible for bringing
together few sex partners but the likelihood of
relationships lasting were high.
• Maticks-Tyundale, Herold & Mewhinney, 1998
studied “helping” between same-sex boys groups
and girls groups who traveled to Florida on Spring
Break.
• The boys’ groups and girls’ groups made pacts
within their individual groups to help each other
but in significantly different ways…

Sex and Friends
• …The men generally promised to help each other find a
partner to have sex with
• If they were sharing a room they made plans as to how to it
discreetly available in case one of them wanted to bring a
woman there for sex*
• The women, in contrast, made agreements to help each
other avoid having sex, unless one happened to find “true
love”.
• They promised each other that if one of them got drunk
and was being “hit on” the others would protect her
• If they were sharing a room they promised not to leave
another one in the room by themselves with a man

Sex and Friends
Why these differences?
• Rooted in Social Exchange Theory (Baumeister & Vohs,
2004) which says that society treats sex as something that
men want from women and so men give women other
resources (love, commitment, respect, attention, money).
• Spring break sex is typically free sex for men that is not
accompanied by a commitment or other resources. Free
sex  good deal for men. This is why men will support
other men to engage in free sex.
• Free sex  bad deal for women. Women will support
other women and help each other avoid free sex with men

THE BYSTANDER EFFECT: Crossing the village Mowaka is overpowered by army ants.
Later bystanders were quoted as having stated that they were horrified but
didn’t want to get involved

5 Steps to Helping and the Obstacles encountered at each step

Sex and Aggression
What is Aggression?
- Human aggression defined by SPs as any behavior
intended to harm another person who is
motivated to avoid the harm (Baron &
Richardson, 1994). Includes 3 important features:
- 1) Aggression is a behavior – you can see it.
Aggression is not an emotion or a thought.
- 2) Aggression is intentional (not accidental) and is
intended to harm
- 3) According to the definition, the victim wants to
avoid the harm.

Aggression: Definition
• Hostile Aggression – “hot” impulsive, angry behavior that is
motivated by a desire to harm someone
• Instrumental Aggression – is “cold” premeditated,
calculated behavior that is motivated by some other goal
(such as obtaining money, restoring one’s image, or
restoring justice)
• Verbal Aggression – (yelling, swearing, screaming)
• Physical Aggression - (hitting, kicking, stabbing, shooting)
• Passive Aggression – harming someone by withholding
behavior (eg. Purposely failing to convey an important
message)
• Active Aggression – defined as harming someone by
performing a behavior (eg. Spreading vicious rumors)

Violence: Definition
• Violence in general is aggression that has as its
goal extreme harm, such as injury or death (eg.
One child pushing another off a tricycle is an act
of violence but not aggression. One person
intentionally hitting, kicking, shooting, or
stabbing another person is an act of violence.
• The FBI classifies four crimes as “violent”:
homicide, aggravated assault, forcible rape and
robbery. Thus all violent acts are aggressive acts
but not all aggressive acts are violent. Only he
extreme ones are.

Antisocial: Definition
• In general refers to behavior that either damages
interpersonal relationships or is culturally undesirable.
• Aggression is often equated with antisocial behavior
• Other views that state that Aggression is often a social
as well as an antisocial strategy in that it is a way that
people seek to manage their social lives, such as by
influencing the behavior of others so as to get their
way (Tedeschi & Felson, 1994)
• Littering and cheating are behaviors that qualify as
antisocial but are not aggressive

Sexual Aggression
• Aggression also used to get sex, by force ->
constitutes Rape.
• Usually perpetrated by men against women
though there are similar cases where women
force men to have sex. Here however the
traumatic consequences are are lesser than what
female rape victims suffer (Anderson &
Struckman-Johnson, 1998)
• Sometimes men force other men to have sex and
women force other women though the former is
considered to be the more serious problem

Sexual Aggression
• Defining rape / sexual coercion is a difficult issue
compounding the problem of understanding.
• Sexual coercion consists of multiple phenomena
that stems from different causes
• Some researcher have applied broad, loose
definitions of sexual coercion using one big
category that includes everything from being
attacked , beaten, and forced into intercourse by
a stranger to the case of a young man who “steals
a kiss” on a date when the young woman has not
given him permission to kiss her

Sexual Aggression
• Far more cases resembling the stolen kiss than
the forcible stranger rape, the stolen kiss data
• The National Health and Social Life Survey
(NHSLS) concluded that between 15% and 22 %
of women had been forced into some sexual
activity against their will, but only 1 % were
forced by strangers.
• Majority of victims said that the person who
forced them was someone they were in love with
at the time.

Sexual Aggression
• How victims fare depends on which definition
of rape is used:
• Victims of violent rape, especially by
strangers, often suffer lasting problems,
including fear and anxiety, depression, and
sexual problems
• many blame themselves
• Some withdraw from other people and
become socially isolated

Sexual Aggression
• In looser definitions of sexual coercion were used
in studies, the results suggested much less lasting
trauma
• In these cases the man apologized and the
woman simply forgave him and went on to
consider him a friend
• O’Sullivan et al., (1998) found that one of five
rape victims would consent to having sex with the
rapist on a later occasion.
• These patterns equate with date rape patterns
and not violent stranger rapes

Sexual Aggression
Old stereotype of the rapist was either a woman-hater or a man
who lacked social skills and could not get sex via romance and
persuasion and therefore resorted to violence.
Research says otherwise:
-Sexually coercive men generally have other sex partners and
have more sex than non-coercive men,
He does not generally hate women but may devalue them
- May have little empathy for their concerns or suffering and is
likely to feel that women have hurt or betrayed him in the
past
- His peer group places high emphasis on sexual conquests and
he wants to be able to boast about them

Cntd…Rapist profile
- Therefore he is motivated to downplay his use of force or coercion and
claim instead that he had consensual sex because it bolsters his ego and
reputation.
- In fact he probably prefers not to use force but he is willing to use any
means he can, including trickery, false promises, untrue declarations of
love, and force, to get sex.
- He has a high sexual motivation and enjoys impersonal, uncommitted sex.
- If his crime is date rape, it is often preceded by some consensual activity
such as oral sex and when the woman wanted to stop he forced her to
continue
- Thinks very highly of himself and may have narcissistic personality
patterns including the sense that he deserves special rewards such as
sexual favors
- He may think that the woman owes hi m sex and that he is only using a bit
of force to claim what he deserves and therefore he may not admit to
himself, or cannot, that what he is doing is immoral and illegal

Theories of Sexuality
Several basic
Social Constructionist Theories:
Theories asserting that attitudes and behaviors, including sexual
desire and sexual behavior, are strongly shaped by culture and
socialization
-specially popular and influential in the ’70s during the peak
years of the sexual revolution *
-asserted that cultural forces and socialization shape how
people assign meaning to their lives,
- Resulting in the fact that sexual attitudes and behaviors vary
widely based on culture.
- Acknowledges that there may be some biological functions to
sex but most forms of sexual desire are seen as the result of
cultural conditioning

Theories of Sexuality: Social
Constructionist Theories
-Who wants to do what to whom sexually is seen as a
result of social and political influences including
upbringing and media influence
-Gender differences in sexuality are seen as highly
changeable roles that are created by society to serve
political or other goals. (Feminist theory allied itself with
the social constructionist approach to sex.)
Women’s sexuality was shaped by how men had long
sought to control and oppress women; again, cultural
influences (such as that of patriarchal society on women)
were seen as decisive.

Theories of Sexuality: Evolutionary
Theory
Evolutionary Theory:
-Asserts that the sex drive has been shaped by natural
selection and thus it’s patterns tend to be innate (Definition)
-Emerged in the ‘70s and ’80s as a radically different view of
sex
-Patterns tend to be where prehistoric men and women who
had the most children won the evolutionary competition
resulting in the fact that people today are mainly descended
from people who had those patterns for desire
-Another pattern is that men chose young women who would
be able to bear children**

Theory• Gender differences are rooted in biology and therefore are
less flexible and less influenced by politics and culture than
gender differences in the social constructionist view
• One difference lies in different reproductive strategies. For
example a woman is able to have only a certain number of
pregnancies in her lifetime but each pregnancy takes a toll on
her body, occupies her body for 9-months, and makes
demand on her time and energy for years.
• A man on the other can make a baby with only a few minutes
of pleasure. Biologically he can walk away without expending
any more time, effort or other resources on that baby but yet
still have passed on his genes.  Implication?

Theory
• Another evolutionary trend is that males are less selective as
to the SES of the woman he is mating with.
• On the other hand, a woman has to be extra selective as to
the SES of the man she mates with and gets pregnant by; if it
is a man from a lower SES, and another man from a higher SES
comes along she cannot make a baby for many months
• In contrast if a man has sex with a low quality woman and a
woman from a higher SES comes along he can make a baby
with the new woman almost immediately
• Thus it is more costly for a woman to have sex with a low-
quality/lower SES partner than for men

Theory
• Finally, getting pregnant is not the only
concern for a woman..
• Finding a man / partner who will help her
provide for her and her children

Theories of Sexuality: Social Exchange
Theory
• Seeks to understand social behavior by analyzing the costs
and benefits of interacting with each other; assumes that
sex is a resource that women have and men want
• Therefore, men have to give women other resources in
exchange for sex such as money, attention, respect, love
and commitment
• Most cultures place a high value on female sexuality and in
some cultures require the female to be a virgin before
marriage and to be faithful; not so much on male sexuality
• Similarly, women can sell sex for money  prostitution.
This option is less frequented by males.

Social Exchange Theory
• Provides an economic perspective on sex as in essence
women’s sexuality is the supply and men’s sexuality
creates the demand
• People’s sexual decisions are affected by what other
people in the peer group or community are doing
• The “price of sex”  how much the man must invest
before the woman consents to sex varies according to
supply and demand
• Eg. A school campus or workplace where the supply of
men outweigh the number of women and vice versa**

Social Influence and Persuasion:
Background to Social Factors that
determine sexual behavior
What is Social Influence?
• SPs distinguish between two major forms of
social influence; normative and informational
• Normative - going along with the crowd to be
liked and accepted*
• Informational – going along with the crowd
because you think the crowd knows more that
you do (rather than because you want to be
liked).

Social Factors that determine Sexual
Preference: Scared into Safe Sex?
• Sexual revolution of the ‘60s caused widespread
increase in sexual activity in the ‘70s
• Then the aids epidemic burst on to the social
consciousness in the ‘80s reflecting on the sexual
activity of the ‘70 as dangerous and irresponsible
behavior
• As a result a movement on the part of institutions
and other entities to “educate” young people
especially by emphasizing that one careless sex
act can lead to a painful, grisly death

Scared into Safe Sex?
• SPs have found that fear-inspiring messages often
backfire, failing to yield the desired changes in
behavior
• Study by Morris and Swann (1996) on the specific
effect of fear-inspiring anti-AIDS films.
• There hypothesis was that some people would find
depictions of AIDS victims personally threatening and
as a result would deny their fear and ignore the
message*
• Study revealed that the sexually active young group
who was shown the films rejected the fear-inducing
message 

• They rated their own risk of getting aids in the next five
years as significantly lower than did a control sample
• Thus the film designed to make people worry more
about their risk actually made them worry less
• At the end of the experimental session the researchers
offered all participants pamphlets about AIDS. It was
confirmed that some subjects were denying the reality
of risk as the sexually active group who had watched
the film took fewer pamphlets
• Lesson: Instilling fear is an unreliable mode of influence
• Why?

•  because people resist feeling bad and they
may resist the influence attempt that uses fear
• Sexually active people know that they live
with the risk for aids
• In order to avoid facing that risk they rejected
the message and lowered their perception of
danger

Sex and Prejudice: Roots of Anti-Gay
Prejudice
What is prejudice?
-A negative feeling toward an individual based
solely on his or her membership in a particular
group
~ “If we were to wake up some morning and find
that everyone was the same race, creed and color,
we would find some other cause for prejudice by
noon.”
--George Aiken, former Governor and US Senator
from Vermont

Roots of anti-gay prejudice
Why are people prejudiced against
homosexuals?
- Evidence indicates that prejudice is strong and
many consider it normal and natural to abhor
sexual deviance*
- In fact homosexuality is found in other species
besides humans (eg. Beetles, birds, dolphins,
fruit bats, orangutans, sheep)

Some facts about anti-gay prejudice
• Stronger among men than women (Herek &
Capitanio, 1996) even though men are more likely
than women to take part in HS activity and to be
HSs.
• According to Whitley (1988) people were asked
separate questions about attitudes toward male
vs. female homosexuality and he found that both
men and women were more intolerant of
homosexuality in their own gender

Facts about anti-gay prejudice
• The most likely explanation for this is that people’s attitudes
are mainly rooted in the fear that they themselves will be the
target of romantic or sexual advances from homosexuals *
• Another dimension may be that they fear that they might
have a positive response to HS advances. We learned that the
men who expressed the strongest ant-gay views were also the
most sexually aroused by watching gay pornography though
they were reluctant to admit it
• The fear of one’s own possible reactions might explain strong
reactions of disgust and hatred; as if the HSs represented a
dangerous threat

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