I nominate this (bolding mine) as my pick for this year’s Freudian Slip award.
At any rate, I would be interested in hearing the results of such a test. It seems to me that you have several obstacles.
One, any correlation you attempt to make between eye focus and sexual orientation depends on the subject’s willingness to classify himself both correctly and truthfully. Otherwise you’ll end up with the “I think he’s gay but he just doesn’t know it” argument, which is hardly what you’re looking for. As Dewey Finn suggests, it’d be hard to obtain your correlating information and leave your test subjects unaware of the nature of your experiment.
Two, you have to eliminate images of men and woman that the subject is likely to be attracted to for other than gender preference. If presented with the photographs of Harrison Ford as Han Solo and Pamela Anderson as … well, as herself, then I’m morely likely to check out the Han Solo picture—and I’m a heterosexual male. (Hey, I like Star Wars. Han Solo is cool.)
For the same reason, watching someone’s eye focus as they are taking in a movie wouldn’t do. In the example given previously, if there’s a steamy hot-n-heavy kissing scene between hero and ingenue, I’m more likely to tune out and think “okay, here’s the obligatory romance. I wonder what’s next? I’ll betcha the ingenue gets captured—hey, look at that picture on the nightstand. That’s probably just the actor’s headshot. Why doesn’t this hotel room have a phone? That’s probably not real snow outside, either. Maybe it’s soap flakes” and I’d not look at either of them. I don’t think this is because I’m asexual, but because I’m taking in the movie as a movie and thinking about it on those terms: how was it made, why was the shot composed this way, how does this scene figure in the plot, etc.
Further, you’d have to be careful about images containing alternative erotica: chicks in glasses, for instance. Leather. East Asian people. Long fingernails. Tattoos. There are even fetish groups for people being carried, people being asleep, people who are barefoot, people who are sneezing, and so on. How will you be certain your results aren’t contaminated by these things?
Lastly, if given a selection of imagery to look for, are your subjects unencumbered enough that they will not feel shameful or guilty or surreptitious about looking at something arousing in the presence of another? Heck, I’ll stare at whatever woman you want if there’s nobody watching me. If I’m in a crowd I’ll put on a disinterested face and examine the billboard for the Double Cheese Burger (or the new Cadillac Escalade, or a bottle of Evian, of whatever).
I too remember an old magazine article but don’t remember if it was Scientific American. They were able to track the pupil’s movement somehow and the result was a picture that had a red trace scribbled all over it to supposedly indicate where the subject had looked. I don’t think the aim was to divine sexual preference, but just to see what the human brain thought was the most important thing to look at when encountering another human (for purposes of recognition).
Yep - psychology 101. Where the eye focuses on when looking at another face. Again, Shagnasty should know about this already if basing a Phd thesis on it.
I’m hardly being obtuse. The point is simple: before your gay-o-meter can be called a definitive measuring device, you must prove that heterosexual males always (enough so to disprove the null hypothesis - 95%?) look at representations of attractive* females primarily, or first, and that gay males do not.
*That’s a witches’ den in itself. I find I disagree with my friends about which rocket bodies are attractive or not.
One potential problem: The establishment of a controlled baseline for validation. First you’ll have to try calibrate using self-declared “straights” and “gays”. But we’ve already know that’s problematic, or simple self-declararion would be all that is necessary. What’s your standard? You can only measure something compared to something else. But we already know the best measurements we have are unreliable. If you were designing an instrument to measure something measureable better than before, then validation would be easy. But you’re trying to measure something apparently not reliably measurable, and I have a hard time thinking of ways to define what your measurements will correlate to in any established sense.
So, you need help with your dissertation? How noble. Why choose to talk to people who are clearly inferior to your Ivy League standards?
Anyway, your theory is flawed. Motor responses and sexual predeliction are not inherently connected. I guess you need to be able to prove me wrong in order to make your thesis work, I await your (objective) data. Good luck!
Too bad that scientific method is out of style, it used to be that people didn’t influence their experiments with suppositions.
It’s a pretty interesting idea for a psych experiment, at any rate.
You’d still have to correlate the seeking of attractive gals with other factors, such as masturbation ideation and actual sexual practices (IANApyschologist).
Yes. It is possible to track eye movements quite accurately and not too intrusively - it has been used in various psychological experiments (I remember one that debunked the marketing guru mantra ‘eye level is buy level’ and another that demonstrated that most men, when meeting a woman, look at something like Breasts-Face-Breasts-Crotch-Legs-Breast before finally managing to stay focused on the face).
Finding out whether your Gay-O-Meter is accurate might prove difficult, since your primary channel of corroboration is self-identification, which you appear to mistrust.
Shagnasty, you’ve been posting for awhile so I’m gonna take your word for it re the whole Ivy League, PHD etc. scenario, but your use of terms, concepts etc. in this GQ discussion does not jibe with the level of sophistication I’d be expecting out of someone with a “partial PHD” in the area of study you are claiming affiliation with.
Ringo’s point about the relative indeterminability of accurately targeting sexual preference indicators given the enormous range of responses people can have, is the main problem here. Assuming the goal of the study is (mainly) to construct a reliable sexual preference indicator you are attempting to disassemble and understand how a swiss watch works using a sledge hammer and a crowbar.
I’m heterosexual, but I’m also 46 years old, and if I saw two pictures of a skinny supermodel, and a very well built guy about my age, side by side, I might well look at the guy first, or for a longer time thinking “you know if he can look that good, maybe I can too”. There are 1001 reasons why people are attracted to elements in a picture.
One of the most interesting things I have discovered as an SDMB member is how non-stereotypical people are in their responses. I’ve always been fascinated with different lifestyles, and generally kinda-sorta assumed (male) gay people lived in this alternative universe of immaculate living spaces along with perfect cooking and style choices. I have since come to find out that gay people can be uncertain cooks, casual housekeepers, and sometimes sit around watching TV on friday night eating mac & cheese and drinking a beer sans coaster.
Given the real world variability in human responses, looking at where the eyes go as a reliable indicator of sexual preference is likely to be an uncertain enterprise.
Whatever the other folks say, I think it sounds like an interesting avenue for research. (Why all the self-righteous mutters about not doing reasonable-sounding, interesting research?) I’m a gay guy, and I’ll second the notion of quickly scanning each guy and then immediately focusing on the hottest one. And returning frequently to gaze some more.
Penile tumescence studies in general sound completely meaningless to me. It makes sense in a general way, but I can’t imagine the data would be clean enough - after all, if getting a hard-on means you’re aroused, then I’m frequently aroused by my data entry job. Or maybe little Excalibre just likes to do his own thing sometimes, you know?
Yo, Ringo, that’s the point of doing scientific research. To, you know, “prove” it. See if, for example, there’s a correllation between self-reported sexual orientation, or behavioral data, and eye movements. What world do you live in where experimentation is only conducted to confirm what’s already proven?
Very nice that you have opinions, but again, this is about conducting scientific research - so it’s not quite so necessary to rely on our opinions.
Is there anyone left who hasn’t heard the shpiel on how everyone’s secretly bisexual at heart, or how we’re all unique beautiful snowflakes who can’t be categorized, or whatever this oft-repeated message is about?
The point is to conduct research. You know, to see if physical responses to stimuli correllate to behaviors or self-identified traits. It’s not a crime to want to learn more about things - this line of reasoning would seem to suggest that it’s racist to want to do research on black people’s increased susceptibility to hypertension, or examine cultural commonalities in an ethnic group. Why is obtaining scientific knowledge so threatening?
Again, why is doing research such a scary thought? He wasn’t suggesting using the machine to weed out the queermos at puberty. Just to, you know, see if people respond in a certain way to certain stimuli. And I don’t know how much you know about the subject, but gay men notoriously report to be straight in surveys, (whether or not they believe it themselves), and it’s a major confounding factor when trying to study gay issues.
Once again, research would help us figure that out. It would be interesting to see how bisexual people respond, and whether a continuum of sorts exists between behavior and eye-focusing, if indeed the notion turns out to have some value. I don’t understand why you guys are so opposed to even finding that out.
What did the guy say to invite your venom (and criticism of his spelling?) He didn’t say anything bad about gay people - he just thought up an interesting avenue for research.
Naturally, it’s only right to assume he’s got mass murder on his mind until proven otherwise!
I assumed nothing and implied nothing. Shagnasty was the one who first mentioned the “concentration camp screening,” and other posters suggested other nefarious purposes. I only knew from the OP that he was trying to discover something that was none of his business without directly asking the people in question, and asked why.
Thank you for your support Excalibre. Everything you said is right on the money.
I am not sure where the venom is coming from either. I didn’t explain my background very well so I can’t hold people responsible for being a little puzzled (viscious).
My original work was sexual differentiation in rats. In particular, modifying both the pre- and postnatal hormonal environment to influence sexual behavior in rats. Also, I studied anatomical brain differences that resulted when a rat was exposed to a pre- or postnatal hormones that were typical of the opposite sex. In case you are curious, there are several behavioral and anatomical brain changes that occur when you manipulate their hormone levels at different stages of development. There are whole books written on the subject.
I got bored with animal research after I finished my classes and decided to drop out without finishing my dissertation because my heart wasn’t really in it. Now, I am thinking about going back into another Ph.D. program. This time I want to study something to do with sexual preference and sexual differentiation in humans. The mistake I made the last time was that I really didn’t know what I wanted the end result of my research to be.
This time, I want to have some ideas about exactly what I want to study before I even apply to another graduate program. This will help me choose the right program and the right adviser to work under. I am certainly not expert on sexual preference in humans yet. I came up with this idea while I was falling asleep one night and decided to throw it out there to see what others thought.
Rest assured, my motives are nothing but academic so you can stop the allegations and the poisonous comments.
Yeah, nice try, but you completely miss the point.
FTR, if i were to label myself, it would be “heterosexual.” I certainly don’t consider myself bisexual. Yet i have no problem with kissing a guy as a greeting, if he’s my friend and that’s the sort of greeting he’s most comfortable with.
The point i was trying to make to the OP–and now to you, since you don’t seem to have been paying attention–is that there is no necessary correlation between certain behaviors and self-identified sexuality. As others have pointed out, there are so many variables involved in trying to determine why someone’s eyes might involuntarily stray towards a picture of a man or a woman , that any conclusion reached by such a study would have so many caveats as to be practically useless.
Also, why, exactly, do we need to be categorized at one particular place along some gay-straight yardstick? What purpose would this serve, exactly? I am having trouble thinking of a single positive use to which this “knowledge” might be put.
It’s not threatening at all. I never said that i was threatened by the OP’s plan, just that i thought it was ill-conceieved and demonstrated a singular lack of engagement with the complex issues that need to be grasped when conducting research such as this.
Furthermore, you define this project as one that intends to discover whether “physical responses to stimuli correllate to behaviors or self-identified traits.” That’s fine and dandy, if that’s all the OP intended doing. But the OP himself said “I want to help other people believe that sexual orientiation is biological.” Well, the experiment that he has designed does not, in my opinion, have any chance of proving his hypothesis. All the experiment might be able to demonstrate is a correlation and, as any scientist will tell you, correlation does not necessarily mean causation.
The fact that a self-ifdentifying gay man might have certain involuntary biological or physiological responses to external stimuli does not prove that his sexual orientation is a product of biological determination. It may well be possible to design a test that would prove what the OP is seeking to prove, but this ain’t it.
Well, if you combine this question with the OP’s declared previous work, you could use it to test or be tested by physiological signs of sexual orientation.
If the test were good enough, you might be able to use this to more accurately test theories of WHY we get to be who we are, rather than relying on polling for instance. Why shouldn’t we know what makes us who we are?
I think a reliable way of measuring sexual response and/or attraction would be a very valuable tool for the study of human biology and psychology. Something that could provide a visual stimulus and then record something unarbitrary about the response to that stimulus (e.g. eye movement) could be a cheap, convenient, and hence widely usable means of studying human sexuality if you can prove initially that what you record correlates well with whatever you wish to study.
Thing is, as I said, the OP tells us it’s hard to pin down orientation, not the least because some study subjects are confused about it or simply lie. He wants to find an unambiguous way to measure sexual orientation. Well, how do you prove it’s unambiguous? That’s where this idea (and anything like it, actually) runs into trouble. I mean, if, after validation, your machine tells you study subject A is as gay as the night is black, yet he insists on his red-blooded-heterotude (plus he has a wife, kids, etc), well, which one is right? Could be the machine is right, but he’s a liar. Or not. No way to know without having an unambiguous way to determine the person is lying (or merely confused). This gets tough.
Having said this, it might just be possible that this tool could work on some people. Thing is, you’ll only know it’s working on the people who are telling you the truth about/are sure of their orientation. Then of course, your instrument can be tweaked to correlate close to perfectly with “gay”, “straight” and anything in between. But as soon as the first guy comes along with a voice that says “straight” but eyes that say “gay”, well, what do you do with that?
I wouldn’t feel bad. I don’t think any unarbitrary means of measurement is safe from this conundrum. Your idea may be no worse than any other, and hence could still be useful.
From the start:
How do you select the photos to view? How do you control for all the reasons someone might unconsciously look at a picture firs? What if black men look at black women forst, or white women. Perhaps a Catholic might be drawn to an image of somone wearing a cross or Star of David. What if there’s a picture of someone with an odd hairdo.
How do you validate your test results? You end up having to compare your results to self-reported answers of your subjects, and given what has already been said about sexual self-identification issues, what is that going to prove?
The most you’ll be able to say is that there’s a higher or lower degree of correlation between self-reported straight males andoptic response to certain visual stimuli.
Not to discourage you however, as I’m sure whole careers in pychology and sociology have been built on less. It’s just be another experiment of questionable methodolgy and ambiguous results that the next generation of grad students can write their papers about.
To discourage you, I would be amazed if this experiment or something very much like it hasn’t already been done many times by leagues of grad students.
That’s exactly the point I made. shagnasty’s errant assumption in designing the gay-o-meter is that his hypothesis of gay v. straight first-focus observations is correct, and that is not at all a given.
Your thesis is gonna be savagely attacked no matter what because it has huge political implications.
There’s a big disagreement among political types about what percentage of the American population is gay. Some say it is 1-2 percent, others that it’s more like 10-15 percent. I’m not aware of any conclusive studies that have established that one or the other is accurate.
Now, pro-gay advocates in our culture tend to go for the 10-15 percent figure, anti-gay types tend to like the 1-2 percent. Obvioiusly, that’s because if it’s 10-15 percent then gays are a huge percentage of the voting population, easily enough to swing a lot of elections, and thus the political attitudes of gays must be attended to. If it’s 1-2 percent, it’s much less significant politically, and the attitudes of gays do not merit much attention.
If you can devise a test which gives an authoritative number for the percentage of gays in U.S. society, somebody’s gonna win and somebody’s gonna lose. High stakes, y’know? So in a sense it’s safer for gay advocates that no such test exists, because then they don’t lose what little political clout they’ve developed in recent years.
This may explain some of the venom directed at you.
However, as someone without a dog in this fight, I gotta say your OP isn’t consistent with what I’d expect of a doctorate-level researcher in sexual differentiation. I would presume that you would have kinda absorbed much of the information you were asking about, including the information I just posted, in the course of reading on your topic and talking with colleagues. Your comments are more along the lines of what I might expect of a bright high-school student posing as a university researcher. So I kinda share in the dubiousity here.