Going gaga
Katrin Lübke, Matthias Hoenen & Bettina Pause
Behavioural Brain Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
On an individual level, human body odors carry information about whether a person is an eligible mate. The current studies investigate if body odors also transmit information about individuals being potential partners in more general terms, namely in regards to gender and sexual orientation. In study 1, 14 gay and 14 heterosexual men were presented with body odors obtained from potential partners (gay male and heterosexual female body odors, respectively) and heterosexual male body odor as a control. In study 2, 14 lesbian and 14 heterosexual women were presented with lesbian female and heterosexual male body odors representing body odors of potential partners, and heterosexual female body odor as a control. Central nervous processing was analyzed using chemosensory event-related potentials and current source density analysis (64-channel EEG recording). Gay and heterosexual men responded with shorter P2 latencies to the body odors of their preferred sexual partners, and lesbian women responded with shorter P2 latencies to body odors of their preferred gender. In response to heterosexual male body odors, lesbian women displayed the most pronounced P3 amplitude, and distinct neuronal activation in medial frontal and parietal neocortical areas. A similar pattern of neuronal activation was observed in gay men when presented with heterosexual male body odor. Both the early processing advantage (P2) for desirable partners' body odors as well as the enhanced evaluative processing (P3, CSD) of undesirable partners' body odors suggest that human body odors indeed carry information about individuals being potential partners in terms of gender and sexual orientation.
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Trajectories of Alcohol and Cigarette Use Among Sexual Minority and Heterosexual Girls
Michael Marshal et al.
Journal of Adolescent Health, January 2012, Pages 97-99
Purpose: To examine disparities between sexual minority girls (SMGs) and heterosexual girls in trajectories of substance use over time.
Method: Girls were included in the analyses if they were 12-18 years of age at wave 1 and did not miss sexual orientation data at wave 4 (n = 7,765). Latent curve models were estimated across all four waves (extending from middle adolescence into young adulthood) to examine trajectories of cigarette and alcohol use.
Results: Initial levels of substance use were higher for SMGs than they were for heterosexual girls. SMGs also exhibited sharper escalations in use across all substances over time as they were transitioning into young adulthood.
Conclusions: Persistent rates of cigarette and heavy alcohol use among SMGs may increase their risk for a host of mental and physical health problems in adulthood. Clinicians should be prepared to discuss SMG health topics effectively and in private, and discuss prevention and intervention programs with girls at risk.
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Danielle Berke et al.
Psychology of Men & Masculinity, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research linking gender conformity and physical aggression has largely focused on men as both perpetrators and victims. Furthermore, extant literature emphasizes the role of individual differences in theorizing and assigning meaning to aggressive interactions. The current study aims to build on the sparse literature on victimization of nonconforming women while rooting this vein of inquiry more firmly in dynamic sociocognitive models of interactive behavior. In the current study, 60 collegiate men participated in a sham aggression paradigm against a female confederate whose appearance was manipulated to exhibit either "masculine" or "feminine" characteristics. Aggression was measured in terms of frequency, intensity, and duration of electric shocks ostensibly administered by the participant to his fictional opponent. Results indicated that low masculine conforming men evinced higher levels of aggression against the feminine opponent than they did toward a masculine opponent. Findings are discussed in terms of the unique influence of the female gender role as it relates to variability in men's conformity to masculinity and risk of aggressive responding. The purported protective effects of positive masculinity are also discussed.
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Morten Ender et al.
Armed Forces & Society, January 2012, Pages 164-172
Abstract:
The authors investigate a gap in attitudes toward homosexuals in the U.S. military among a select group of people - American civilian undergraduates, Reserve Officer Training Corp (ROTC) cadets, and cadets at military academies. Using a subsample (N = 3057) of data from the Biannual Attitude Survey of Students (BASS), being a military academy cadet is associated with the strongest agreement for barring homosexuals from serving in the military, followed by ROTC cadets and civilians. These trends continue when controlling for respondents' sex and political affiliation - the two most significant predictors of agreeing to bar homosexuals from military service. A small reduction in agreement for barring was found among academy cadets over time.
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Prenatal Influences on Sexual Orientation: Digit Ratio (2D:4D) and Number of Older Siblings
Katariina Kangassalo, Mari Pölkki & Markus Rantala
Evolutionary Psychology, October 2011, Pages 496-508
Abstract:
Prenatal androgen levels are suggested to influence sexual orientation in both sexes. The 2D:4D digit ratio has been found to associate with sexual orientation, but published findings have often been contradictory, which may partly be due to the large ethnic diversity between and within studied populations. In men, number of older brothers has been found to correlate positively with homosexuality. This phenomenon has been explained with a maternal immune reaction, which is provoked only by male fetuses and which gets stronger after each pregnancy. Here we assessed the relationship of sexual orientation to 2D:4D ratios and number of older siblings in Finland, where the population is found to be genetically relatively homogeneous. As in many previous studies, heterosexual men had lower 2D:4D than non-heterosexual men, which supports the notion that non-heterosexual men experience higher androgen levels in utero than population norms. Contrary to previous reports, non-heterosexual women had higher 2D:4D than heterosexual women. Non-heterosexual men had more older brothers and older sisters than heterosexual men. The greater number of older sisters in non-heterosexual men indicates that there are other factors that contribute to the higher birth order of homosexual men than the maternal immunization.
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Jan Antfolk et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
At an ultimate level of explanation, the causes of incest aversion have been linked to the reproductive costs of inbreeding, whereas at a proximate level of explanation, experienced environmental cues relating to the successful recognition of kin have been shown to moderate both the likelihood of engaging in incest and the aversion to descriptions of third-party incest. However, little is known concerning how incest aversion is moderated by evolutionarily relevant factors presented in such descriptions. As disgust has been suggested to down-regulate incestuous sexual interest, we investigated to what extent the gender, biological relatedness, co-residence, and family-relationship type of actors described in incest scenarios moderate the elicited disgust of men and women reading those descriptions. Analyzing responses from 434 participants, we found that women are more disgusted by incest than men, that descriptions of biological incest elicited more disgust than sociolegal incest, that descriptions of incest between family members having co-resided elicited more disgust than incest between family members growing up apart, and that descriptions of incest between a parent and a child elicited more disgust than incest between siblings. Our conclusion is that variations in the degree of disgust elicited by descriptions of third-party incest are consistent with evolutionary hypotheses concerning inbreeding avoidance.
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Jaroslava Valentova et al.
Archives of Sexual Behavior, December 2011, Pages 1145-1152
Abstract:
Studies of North Americans suggest that laypeople can judge the sexual orientation of others with greater than chance accuracy based on brief observations of their behavior (i.e., "gaydar" exists). One factor that appears to contribute to these judgments is targets' degree of masculinity-femininity. However, behaviors related to sexual orientation and to masculinity-femininity might vary across cultures. Thus, cross-cultural work is needed to test whether judgments of sexual orientation are more accurate when targets and raters are from the same culture. American and Czech male targets, 38 homosexual and 41 heterosexual, were videotaped and brief segments of the videotapes were presented to American and Czech raters. Overall, raters' judgments of targets' sexual orientation were related to targets' self-reported sexual orientation. However, the relationship was stronger when targets were judged by raters from their own country. In general, results suggest that there are both cross-cultural similarities and differences in gaydar and in cues related to sexual orientation.
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Iimay Ho & Megan Rolfe
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, October 2011, Pages 390-412
Abstract:
As of 2011, only 19 countries around the world grant immigration rights to the foreign same-sex partners of gay and lesbian citizens. Of these, Australia and Israel are two countries that recognize same-sex couples in the immigration system without the recognition of same-sex marriages or civil unions. Since the Defense of Marriage Act prohibits any federal recognition of same-sex unions in the USA, we compare Australia and Israel with the USA in this comparative-historical, cross-sectional study to identify the factors that led to the inclusion of same-sex partners in the immigration systems of Australia and Israel and determine whether these factors are present in the USA. Through secondary data analysis from 1988 to 2000, we find that parliamentary politics, the autonomy of ministers, and access to elite allies in Australia and Israel created a political opportunity structure that was favorable to gay rights activists. Activists then used a civil rights frame, further legitimizing their cause and reducing opposition. Although gay immigrant rights activists in the USA use a similar frame, we conclude that the political opportunity structure of the USA limits successful advocacy for gay immigration equality.
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Kyunghun Jung et al.
Evolution and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Traditional criteria for modularity assert that perceptual adaptations for processing evolutionarily important stimuli should operate "automatically" in the sense of requiring no central attentional resources. Here, we test the validity of this automaticity criterion by assessing the attentional demands of a well-studied perceptual adaptation: judgment of facial attractiveness. We used locus-of-slack logic in a dual-task psychological refractory period paradigm, where Task 1 was a speeded judgment of tone pitch (low vs. high), and Task 2 was a speeded judgment of whether a face was attractive or unattractive, with the Task-2 judgment manipulated to have a low or a high difficulty level. In two studies (N=36 and N=73 female participants; 384 trials each), the Task 2 difficulty effects were additive with stimulus-onset asynchronies (100, 300, 500 or 900 ms) on Task 2 response times. According to the locus-of-slack logic, this result implies that participants could not discriminate facial attractiveness level, while their central attentional resources were still occupied by Task 1. If the human capacity for perceiving facial attractiveness - a premier example of an adaptation - does not show automaticity in this sense, automaticity may not be a useful criterion for identifying psychological adaptations.
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Transgender inclusion and the changing face of lesbian softball leagues
Ann Travers & Jillian Deri
International Review for the Sociology of Sport, December 2011, Pages 488-507
Abstract:
This article examines the re-negotiation of sex-based boundaries within the context of transgender/transsexual inclusion in North American lesbian softball leagues. Semi-structured interviews with transgender participants combined with participant observation have been undertaken. We focus on the ‘climate' (Hall and Sandler, 1982) for transgender participation in lesbian softball leagues that have adopted radical (non sex-binary-based) transinclusive policies. The majority of our research participants report positive experiences of inclusion and our own observations inform us that trans participation has already changed the faces of these leagues to the extent that lesbian identity is being queered: it is shifting away, at least to some degree, from assumed biological commonality to cultural affinity. Positive experiences, however, were more uniformly reported by transgender women than by transmen. A number of transmen, while reporting experiences of inclusion, expressed both personal ambivalence about participating in lesbian sporting and non-sporting spaces and a desire for fuller inclusion in the form of sensitivity and awareness concerning the use of gendered pronouns and categorical invocations. Our study documents cultural processes of sex boundary re-negotiation. As such it builds on previous scholarship (Travers, 2006) that suggests that lesbian softball leagues with non-sex-binary based transinclusive policies may offer a model for queering mainstream sporting spaces away from the socially constructed categories of the two sex system.