Interestingly enough, the lab test for popery also uses a penile plethysmograph.
to survey the size of a bishopric?
The thing is, the notion has by now become almost a cliché itself by dint both of reiterated repetition and, to be honest, reiterated observation in the field, as with the aforementioned Haggard et al.
The study doesn’t really tell me I can any more reliably use observed fact “loud homophobe” as prima facie evidence for* suspicion “repressed homosexual”*. It does say that those who *are *in denial are likely to react in a more intensely antagonistic manner, but that tells me nothing about what proportion of the total universe of obnoxious homophobes that represents.
It’s not subliminal. Subliminal messaging would be if the words where flashed in between frames of a video, so fast that you wouldn’t be able to really see them. If it was subliminal, if you asked the viewer afterwards what words were flashed they would not be able to tell you. For these types of tests they are flashed quickly to see how quickly you associate things, but you would be able to see and know what words were flashed.
I believe that seeing how quickly you make connections with words is somewhat accepted. I’ve seen similar tests with black and white people and good and bad associations. It works on the same principle as if I were to ask you to say what colors the following words are:
RED BLUE GREEN ORANGE
RED BLUE GREEN ORANGE
You could probably say what the colors of the first row were pretty quickly, but were slower on the second row since the colors weren’t associated with the right words.
I don’t know if I’ve explained it well, but it seems like a valid test to me.
Is that what they mean? Because the article actually says:
Why would they call it subliminal if that’s not what they mean?
The report says the “me” and “others” messages were flashed up subliminally for 35 milliseconds. Sounds a bit dubious to me, for reasons gracer states. However, we are only reading a summary of the study which doesn’t entirely make sense, so there may be more substance to it.
Sorry, I guess I misread. I was thinking it would be like the test here for prejudice, where they flash white and black faces and you sort them, then positive and negative words, and seeing if you sort good and bad with white or black. If it was truly subliminal, then I would too be skeptical of the test.
My guess is it’s a matter of projection. A guy is a homosexual but has been raised in an environment which taught him that homosexuality was wrong. So he denies he is a homosexual while still being attracted to other men. Therefore, he projects his attraction on to the other men and decides they’re the cause - they’re making him have homosexual feelings. He tells himself if he could eliminate these men, then he wouldn’t have these feelings anymore.
Certainly I’ve always found it difficult to explain the reasoning of homophobes who express fear that gay influence will cause straight people to “catch the gay”. The only explanation I have ever been able to come up with is that such homophobes are repressed gays. Actual straight people aren’t going to have any such fear.
Or it could just be one of hundreds of things that people believe despite having no evidence. See: religion.
This is one of those posts that makes me instinctively try to click on ‘Like’.
This is a complete hijack, but: are you at all worried about the effects of listening to potentially objectionable ideas with in a semi-conscious state? I don’t know if there’s much evidence to support the idea that listening to things like that repeatedly would have some kind of suggestive effect, but it would certainly concern me.
Does he sound Ugandan by any chance? (YouTube for “Eat da poo poo” if you haven’t seen it and for some reason really want to see more overly-lurid homophobic preaching.)