They showed gay porn videos to men who rated themselves completely straight on the Kinsey scale, and found that the homophobic guys got... distinctly aroused. Here's the abstract:
Abstract: The authors investigated the role of homosexual arousal in exclusively heterosexual men who ad- mitted negative affect toward homosexual individuals. Participants consisted of a group of homo- phobic men (n = 35) and a group of nonhomophobic men (n = 29); they were assigned to groups on the basis of their scores on the Index of Homophobia (W. W. Hudson & W. A. Ricketts, 1980). The men were exposed to sexually explicit erotic stimuli consisting of heterosexual, male homosex- ual, and lesbian videotapes, and changes in penile circumference were monitored. They also com- pleted an Aggression Questionnaire (A. H. Buss & M. Perry, 1992 ). Both groups exhibited increases in penile circumference to the heterosexual and female homosexual videos. Only the homophobic men showed an increase in penile erection to male homosexual stimuli. The groups did not differ in aggression. Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.
Dogs are Man's Best Friend
Cats are Man's Adorable Little Serial Killers
And tomorrow they will release a study that indicates water is wet.
Seriously, I've (and probably most everyone) heard "homophobes are closet gays" joked about for years, and it's amusing and somewhat unsurprising to see that it has, in fact, basis in reality.
Jonathan McKenzie
Half-Insane Snakehead | MSPaint Acolyte | Wierd TGOD'er
"Every time you stay abstinent...Kitten kills a god."
Old news. I read a study from years ago that had this same set-up and got the same results.
One of the hypotheses is that homophobes at some level realize that they're gay, but they hate it in themselves and try to fight it by attacking others. It's like when people say, "If they were actually comfortable with their own sexuality, why would they care about what other guys do?" Well, they're not comfortable, so they very much do care.
