Antihomosexual prejudice among men correlates with secretly repressed homosexual arousal

Evidence

An example of the psychodynamic view is the idea that antihomosexual prejudice results from the perceiver’s own “latent homosexuality.” Individuals who have internalized the notion that homosexuality is immoral yet themselves experience homosexual impulses would try to deny these desires in themselves and displace their self-loathing onto others. Adams, Wright, and Lohr (1996) found that avowedly heterosexual male participants’ antihomosexual attitudes were correlated with greater penile tumescence when viewing videos of homosexual sex. This study is consistent with the idea that men who had repressed their own homosexual impulses had (at least in part) transformed self-loathing into hostility toward others. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1566

An example of the psychodynamic view is the idea that antihomosexual prejudice results from the perceiver’s own “latent homosexuality.” Individuals who have internalized the notion that homosexuality is immoral yet themselves experience homosexual impulses would try to deny these desires in themselves and displace their self-loathing onto others. Adams, Wright, and Lohr (1996) found that avowedly heterosexual male participants’ antihomosexual attitudes were correlated with greater penile tumescence when viewing videos of homosexual sex. This study is consistent with the idea that men who had repressed their own homosexual impulses had (at least in part) transformed self-loathing into hostility toward others. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1566

An example of the psychodynamic view is the idea that antihomosexual prejudice results from the perceiver’s own “latent homosexuality.” Individuals who have internalized the notion that homosexuality is immoral yet themselves experience homosexual impulses would try to deny these desires in themselves and displace their self-loathing onto others. Adams, Wright, and Lohr (1996) found that avowedly heterosexual male participants’ antihomosexual attitudes were correlated with greater penile tumescence when viewing videos of homosexual sex. This study is consistent with the idea that men who had repressed their own homosexual impulses had (at least in part) transformed self-loathing into hostility toward others. — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1566

Categorization

• QUESTION: Adams, Wright & Lohr 1996 is a touchstone for psychodynamic explanations of prejudice — worth revisiting the full design to assess whether the tumescence correlation actually held across contexts or was an artifact of the all-male stimulus set.
• CANDY: Avowedly homophobic straight men showed more arousal to gay sex videos — a compact, surprising study finding.
• SHARE: The specific finding that anti-gay attitudes track with involuntary physiological arousal to gay sex is a striking empirical nugget worth sharing with anyone in social psych.
• XREF: Directly evidences the psychodynamic displacement account within the prejudice-psychology thread; corroborates the projection-of-impulse mechanism against homophobia.
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 1566; John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years…, 1566