link established between homophobia and homosexual arousal

[cantata]

Well, of course, one's reasoning for holding a particular opinion can be flawed. But the opinion itself isn't. So there, one can be homophobic for irrational reasons. But if one consider homosexuality wrong in itself, rather than because of some stated reasons, how could one argue against that?

You can argue that the whole notion of "wrong in itself" is irrational. Which it is.

 

[TheManeki]

Thanks, Cantata! I'll go check it out. (And I think you mean the participants were self-identified as straight, not self-identified as gay.)

 

[wpa997]

I can see a problem with self-reporting surveys where the survey-taker may lie, giving inaccurate responses. I'm sure there are some statistical methods for dealing with this, although I don't know if they were used in this survey. If there was lying, however, wouldn't you expect that there would be some anomalies in the results? Instead, there was a very strong statistical correlation.

Not if the individuals who lied did so in order to influence the results.

How large would you have preferred? What's wrong with using volunteers?

I would have preferred at least 100. As for volunteers, think back to the flawed Kinsey research and the problems cited with his use of volunteers.

For the statistical analyses used in the paper -- ANOVA and the Student's t test, both of which are common tools -- there is little improvement in accuracy gained from increasing the sample size from 64 to several hundred subjects. A glimpse at my statistics book shows that for a 95% confidence level, the t-constant for 60 subjects is 2.000 and the t-constant for an infinite number of subjects is 1.960. That's an increase in accuracy of only about 1%. For a 99% confidence level, the constants are 2.660 and 2.576, respectively -- a whopping 3% increase in accuracy. So 64 subjects -- not to mention the smaller groupings of 29 and 35 subjects -- are enough to draw meaningful conclusions.

The problem with using volunteers is that the volunteers can include members who participate in the study simply to influence the results. Kinsey himself did this by using prisoners and rapists in order to get the results that he wanted.

Adams would likely be willing to do the same.

There is another unrelate problem. When you rely upon volunteers for a study such as this, you necessarily exclude those who would never view pornographic images willingly in the first place. (Perhaps for moral or religious reasons.) Thus, it's entirely possible that those who would be willing to view the images in the first place would be more likely to exhibit the response that Adams wanted.

What makes you think this is not a representative cross-section? At college one encounters people from a diverse number of backgrounds, and possibly moreso than in other places. And we're talking about the University of Georgia here, a public school, not some artsy-fartsy liberal private school full of rich kids.

64 College Students from the UGA Psychology Research Pool are not going to representative of the rest of society. To begin with, they were only young white males. There were no Asians, Hispanics, or Blacks. Secondly, UGA is not simply a "public school" it is one of the better schools in the country. Thus, it is unlikely that the study could have included individuals from a lower educational scale and/or socio-economic status. Not to mention that Georgia residents make up a majority of UGA students.

A true representative sample would have included participants from all races, all age groups, all education levels, and all socio-economic backgrounds.

Also, just because it says the subjects came from the "Psychology Department Research Subject Pool" doesn't mean they were all psych majors. Many majors require an intro to psych class, and many more college advisers recommend taking one anyway. Mine sure did. The subject pool then is from a diverse group of majors who happened to be taking psych classes when this study was recruiting subjects.

The main limiting factor here is age, with the subjects' age ranging from 18-31. And this is still a fairly wide range.

Agreed, however I still submit that the Psychology Department Research Subject Pool would necessarily be limited and not a valid cross section of society.

See my response to #2.

The response is not adequate. Reliance upon self-identification and self-reporting surveys are among the reasons that psychology and sociology are considered soft-sciences rather than true science.

This reduces the variability among subjects. The downside is that the results may be less applicable to non-caucasians, but there is now less uncertainty about the results when applied to caucasians.

Less applicable? How about non-applicable?

What is wrong with this? When I took psych 101, it was common as part of the class requirements to have to participate in a study. You could pick which study to participate in, and there were plenty to choose from. More importantly, the students received partial credit for participating, not for giving a particular response.

Students are smart enough to know that a particular response will please their professor.

The Kinsey test was not used to measure homophobia. The Index of Homophobia test was used to measure homophobia.

Read the study. Part of the screening method was to give each student a Kinsey Score. The score helped to seperate the students into groups. Reliance upon the debunked scale at all calls the entire study into question.

The link doesn't work. Please fix it so we can discuss this point.

www . pbs . org / wgbh / pages / frontline / shows / assault / etc / quiz . html

I read the webpage, and it didn't question how accurately a penile plethysmograph measures changes in penis size. It did question the usage of penis measurements to measure arousal in different cases. However, the statistics in Adams' paper shows that in this particular case there is a strong correlation in homophobes between homosexual stimuli and an increase in penile size. Adams does not conclude that this is solely because the homophobes are actually homosexual; he simply presents this hypothesis along with an alternative -- that the homosexual scenes induce anxiety in the homophobes, and this anxiety results in an increase in penile size. He adds that additional research would be needed to distinguish between an anxiety response and an erotic response.

You actually bring up an important point, one lost on many of the activists who attempt to use this study to bash those with opposition to homosexuality. I am glad that you managed to see it.

If Adams never linked "homophobia" to "homosexuality" then the entire premise of citing this study falls into flames, whether the study was valid or not. Ever wonder why the additional research was never done/published?

How do you seperate anxiety from erotic?

 

[TheManeki]

Well, I looked at the test. (FYI, according to the test, I am a high-grade nonhomophobic person -- big surprise there, I know.) But I don't exactly see what merits this comment:

Laughable questionnaire with no real scientific basis for each question asked.

Perhaps wpa will come back and respond in greater detail.

 

[Futuwwa]

You can argue that the whole notion of "wrong in itself" is irrational. Which it is.

To do that, you would have to assume that there is no absolute morality and all moral statements are fundamentally arbitrary and thus invalid. Which you can do, but in that case all moral judgements, both positive and negative, would be equally irrational, making in this case the position of the homophile as irrational as that of the homophobe.

 

[cantata]

(And I think you mean the participants were self-identified as straight, not self-identified as gay.)

True, thanks for pointing that out

 

[cantata]

To do that, you would have to assume that there is no absolute morality and all moral statements are fundamentally arbitrary and thus invalid. Which you can do, but in that case all moral judgements, both positive and negative, would be equally irrational, making in this case the position of the homophile as irrational as that of the homophobe.

That is correct. All "wrong in itself" judgements are irrational.

However, we can make practical and empathetic arguments in favour of being nice to gay people. We do not need to make moral ones. I do not think we can make similar arguments against being nice to them.

 

[Futuwwa]

Fair enough, but that's beyond Stan's original point.

Hmm, the practical arguments would depend on what our ultimate aim is. Only if the parties arguing agree on an ultimate goal do such arguments become relevant. Then you'd have a common axiom and can actually argue for whether a proposed action is beneficial towards it or not.

But if the ultimate aims differ, there is really nothing to argue about. And such is the case in virtually every homosexuality debate on this forum. One has the striving towards the ideals of a (usually) humanistic secular ideology as its aim, the other has the striving towards the ideals set forth in a religious doctrine.

 

[stan1980]

Fair enough, but that's beyond Stan's original point.

What, my point which I clarified by saying their reasons are irrational? So what, why are you bringing my name back into this? Can you try not to be so tedious, please?

 

[TheManeki]

Oh, good! You're back!

Not if the individuals who lied did so in order to influence the results.

In order for the homophobic group to have all produced such a significantly different result than the nonhomophobic group, the entire homophobic group would have needed to be gays posing as homophobes. Extremely unlikely, unless you have evidence that this is another conspiracy -- the tip of the left-wing spear, as it were.

I would have preferred at least 100. As for volunteers, think back to the flawed Kinsey research and the problems cited with his use of volunteers.

Despite your preferences, the statistical result would have been the same if there were 100 subjects instead of 64, as I showed before. The math works out either way -- the homophobic group showed penile enlargement while watching homosexual sex, the nonhomophobic group didn't.

As for the subjects being volunteers, that's typically how things work. In this day and age, scientists don't kidnap people and force them to participate in experiments against their will.

The problem with using volunteers is that the volunteers can include members who participate in the study simply to influence the results. Kinsey himself did this by using prisoners and rapists in order to get the results that he wanted.
Adams would likely be willing to do the same.

And your evidence that Adams did this is...?

64 College Students from the UGA Psychology Research Pool are not going to representative of the rest of society. To begin with, they were only young white males. There were no Asians, Hispanics, or Blacks.

Like I said earlier, this was probably done to reduce the variability in the sample population. The report clearly said the subjects were all caucasian -- there was no subterfuge.

Secondly, UGA is not simply a "public school" it is one of the better schools in the country. Thus, it is unlikely that the study could have included individuals from a lower educational scale and/or socio-economic status. Not to mention that Georgia residents make up a majority of UGA students.

I am quite familiar with UGA, since I live in Georgia and have visited the Athens campus many times. UGA is home to the most diverse group of people in the state outside of Atlanta. Additionally, it's a little more conservative than Atlanta, since Atlanta tends to be more liberal than the rest of the state and the university does draw from the entire state -- not to mention the world. But it is still home to people from different socioeconomic levels, as well as people who are the first in their family to attend college.

A true representative sample would have included participants from all races, all age groups, all education levels, and all socio-economic backgrounds.

Not to mention all over the country, if not all over the world. Doing such a thing, however, increases the complexity of your study, and you have to start somewhere. This study is 12 years old; has nobody followed it up?

Less applicable? How about non-applicable?

You're welcome to prove it, but you'll need to present some evidence that it is totally non-applicable.

Students are smart enough to know that a particular response will please their professor.

Again, you're going to have to prove this occurred.

Read the study. Part of the screening method was to give each student a Kinsey Score. The score helped to seperate the students into groups. Reliance upon the debunked scale at all calls the entire study into question.

First, you'll have to show me that the Kinsey test has been debunked. I'm skeptical that it has been, since peer review would have killed this paper for relying on a worthless method.

You actually bring up an important point, one lost on many of the activists who attempt to use this study to bash those with opposition to homosexuality. I am glad that you managed to see it.

If Adams never linked "homophobia" to "homosexuality" then the entire premise of citing this study falls into flames, whether the study was valid or not. Ever wonder why the additional research was never done/published?

How do you seperate anxiety from erotic?

The premise doesn't fall into flames. There is a definite correlation for homophobes between penile enlargement and homosexual stimuli. When one considers the result of this study in light of the well-known reaction formation neurosis, it gives one pause. I wonder what Ted Haggard would say on the subject?

Neurobiology is not my area of expertise, but I would think MRI or PET imaging of the brain may show activity in different areas for arousal and anxiety. Has a follow-up involving neural imaging techniques been attempted?

At the very least, I would expect some follow-up work being done by Adams and others on this work in the last 12 years. If I get some time over the next few days I'm going to look through the scientific literature, if nobody else beats me to it.

 

[Futuwwa]

What, my point which I clarified by saying their reasons are irrational? So what, why are you bringing my name back into this? Can you try not to be so tedious, please?

Well, I think cantata and I came to the conclusion that, the only way moral statements can be irrational is if every moral statement is.

 

[stan1980]

Well, I think cantata and I came to the conclusion that, the only way moral statements can be irrational is if every moral statement is.

Give me strength... I never said any moral statement is irrational.

All I said was that homophobes are irrational, and I went on to clarify in my very next post that their reasons are irrational.

 

[sidhe]

[Secondly, UGA is not simply a "public school" it is one of the better schools in the country. Thus, it is unlikely that the study could have included individuals from a lower educational scale and/or socio-economic status. Not to mention that Georgia residents make up a majority of UGA students.

Just to completely pick-a-nit here...

*emphasis mine, BTW*

...while UGA may not include individuals from a lower educational scale, due to the absolutely fantastic HOPE scholarship it includes many people from the lower range of the socio-economic scale. I had a friend at UGA whose family was so poor that he hadn't had a house phone until his senior year of high school, and he owned one weeks' worth of clothes and a guitar that was a family heirloom. But he'd worked hard in school, and the state of Georgia was paying his tuition, and a couple other scholarships were paying part of his dorm fees, and he'd worked a full-time job, and a part-time job, over the summer to earn the money to cover the difference.

So a range of economic backgrounds could easily be represented in the study, is all I'm saying, due to the HOPE scholarship.

 

[cantata]

Fair enough, but that's beyond Stan's original point.

Hmm, the practical arguments would depend on what our ultimate aim is. Only if the parties arguing agree on an ultimate goal do such arguments become relevant. Then you'd have a common axiom and can actually argue for whether a proposed action is beneficial towards it or not.

But if the ultimate aims differ, there is really nothing to argue about. And such is the case in virtually every homosexuality debate on this forum. One has the striving towards the ideals of a (usually) humanistic secular ideology as its aim, the other has the striving towards the ideals set forth in a religious doctrine.

I have no problem with any of this. It is quite true that when people have different ultimate aims, in all likelihood they will find little to say to one another, much less which will convince them to change their minds. Yet I think Stan's position is still reasonable, because those on either side of the debate make arguments based on truth claims in support of their positions, and these can be assessed in terms of their logical validity and the veracity of the claims on which they are based.

So suppose that your ultimate aim is to make God happy. It is perfectly reasonable for two Christians to have an argument about how to go about doing this. Similarly, if your ultimate aim is minimise human suffering, it is perfectly possible to have an argument about how to achieve that as well.

Although it is frequently the case that anti-gay and pro-gay people have different ultimate aims or intentions, each is capable of putting themselves in the position of the other and arguing in favour of an approach which would further both of their goals. So for example, someone whose ultimate aim was to minimise human suffering, and who was pro-gay, might argue with someone whose ultimate aim was to keep God happy that God made people gay and that therefore he actually is made happy by loving gay relationships, or that the Bible doesn't actually condemn homosexuality, or something of that sort.

In other words, arguments to show that the Bible condemns homosexuality or that God hates gay sex can be assessed in just the same way as any other arguments - and they can be bad arguments just like any other. People are perfectly capable of imagining that their ultimate goal is to keep God happy (or to minimise suffering), and argue accordingly with people who have those goals.

 

[quatona]

Well, of course, one's reasoning for holding a particular opinion can be flawed.

That was the point.

But the opinion itself isn't.

And it wasn´t the point.

So there, one can be homophobic for irrational reasons.

That, again, was the point.

But if one consider homosexuality wrong in itself, rather than because of some stated reasons, how could one argue against that?

You cannot argue against that. You cannot argue against something that is not based on rationality, in the first place. You cannot argue against the likes or dislikes of person, no matter what funny ways they use to make them appear as somewhat objective. A person is world´s leading expert in knowing her likes and dislikes. There is nothing to argue for me.

The argument won´t start until the person demands/requests/advocates certain actions based on her likes or dislikes - in which case our societies have made it a habit to ask for some rational substantiation within the frame of reference of the paradigms that these societies are based upon.

 

[TheManeki]

Small update: There appear to be about 70 books and articles that reference Adams' 1996 study. I will be slowly going through them, and figured I'd post a link to the list for others to do so as well.

 

[Futuwwa]

Give me strength... I never said any moral statement is irrational.

All I said was that homophobes are irrational, and I went on to clarify in my very next post that their reasons are irrational.

So if I say homosexuality is immoral in itself, rather than because of some imaginary consequences of it, you would be consistent and not consider me irrational?

 

[quatona]

So if I say homosexuality is immoral in itself, rather than because of some imaginary consequences of it, you would be consistent and not consider me irrational?

Well, he could simply consider and call your position immoral in itself, and that would make the conversation void of rational arguments from both sides.

 

[quatona]

So if I say homosexuality is immoral in itself, rather than because of some imaginary consequences of it, you would be consistent and not consider me irrational?

Futuwwa, I´d like to set aside the question who calls whom what, for a moment.
I am more interested in learning what people who make statements about the "inherent immorality" of something expect the person opposite to do with it.
Let´s, for illustration purposes, say, I come here to the discussion with the claim "Heterosexuality is inherently immoral".
Maybe a less emotionally charged topic would be even better:
"Making fire is inherently immoral."
What would be your recommended method of dealing with this statement?

 

[Futuwwa]

If you were a Muslim, I would challenge you to prove your point, show where the Quran says or implies it. If not, I couldn't argue against it in any way.