A. M. Rosenthal

Sexual arousal patterns of bisexual men revisited

Men who identify themselves as bisexual report feeling sexually aroused by both men and women. However, past research has not demonstrated that such men exhibit substantial genital arousal to both male and female erotic stimuli, suggesting that they identify as bisexual for reasons other than their genital arousal pattern. The purpose of the present study was to examine arousal patterns among bisexual men who were recruited using stringent criteria involving sexual and romantic experience with both men and women in order to increase the likelihood of finding a bisexual arousal pattern. Bisexual men in the present study demonstrated bisexual patterns of both subjective and genital arousal. It remains unclear which pattern is most typical of contemporary bisexual men: the present results supporting a bisexual arousal pattern, or previous results not finding one. In either case, understanding men with bisexual arousal patterns could help illuminate the etiology and development of male sexual orientation.

The Male Bisexuality Debate Revisited: Some Bisexual Men Have Bisexual Arousal Patterns

Self-identified bisexual men report high sexual arousal to both male and female stimuli, but no study to date has compellingly demonstrated that such men have a bisexual pattern of genital arousal. We examined sexual arousal patterns among bisexual men recruited using stringent criteria designed to exclude those who were less likely to have sexual interest in both sexes. Furthermore, we included a bisexual stimulus depicting a man engaged in sex simultaneously with another man and a woman. On average, the bisexual men showed a bisexual arousal pattern, with respect to both self-reported and genital arousal. Additionally, the bisexual men were more aroused by the bisexual stimulus compared with the homosexual and heterosexual men. Some bisexual-identified men have bisexual genital arousal patterns, although it remains unclear how common they are.

Neural correlates of sexual arousal in heterosexual and homosexual women and men.

Most men have a category-specific pattern of genital and subjective sexual arousal, responding much more strongly to erotic stimuli depicting their preferred sex than to erotic stimuli depicting their nonpreferred sex. In contrast, women tend to have a less specific arousal pattern. To better understand this sex difference, we used neuroimaging to explore its neural correlates. Heterosexual and homosexual women viewed erotic photographs of either men or women. Evoked neural activity was monitored via fMRI and compared with responses to the same stimuli in heterosexual and homosexual men. Overall, a network of limbic (as well as the anterior cingulate) and visual processing regions showed significantly less category-specific activity in women than men. This was primarily driven by weaker overall activations to preferred-sex stimuli in women, though there was also some evidence of stronger limbic activations to nonpreferred-sex stimuli in women. Primary results were similar for heterosexual and homosexual participants. Women did show some evidence of category-specific responses in the visual processing regions, although even in these regions they exhibited less differential activity than men. In the anterior cingulate, a region with high concentrations of sex-hormone receptors, subjective and neural category specificity measures correlated positively for women but negatively for men, suggesting a possible sex difference in the role of the anterior cingulate. Overall, results suggest that men tend to show more differentiated neural responses than do women to erotic photographs of one sex compared to the other sex, though women may not be entirely indifferent to which sex is depicted.

Individual Differences in Cognition: New Methods for Examining the Personality-Cognition Link

Understanding how all people are the same, some are the same, and yet none are the same is a fundamental challenge to personality and individual differences theorists in particular and psychologists in general (Kluckhohn & Murray, 1953; Revelle, 1995). Unfortunately, there is little work that actually addresses the challenge of Kluckhohn and Murray. As is true for the rest of psychology, there is a strong trend toward fragmentation of the field of individual differences. Particularly in the United States, there is a tendency in personality and individual differences toward the lack of integration of theories of (non-cognitive) personality dimensions with individual differences in cognition. The chapters of this book are partly meant to rectify this shortcoming. We will do our part by reviewing some of the prior research on the effects of non-cognitive variables upon cognition and then introduce a new procedure, “Synthetic Aperture Personality Assessment” (SAPA) as a tool for exploring cognitive and non-cognitive aspects of personality.

Male bisexual arousal: A matter of curiosity?

Conflicting evidence exists regarding whether bisexual-identified men are sexually aroused to both men and women. We hypothesized that a distinct characteristic, level of curiosity about sexually diverse acts, distinguishes bisexual-identified men with and without bisexual arousal. Study 1 assessed mens (n=277) sexual arousal via pupil dilation to male and female sexual stimuli. Bisexual men were, on average, higher in their sexual curiosity than other men. Despite this general difference, only bisexual-identified men with elevated sexual curiosity showed bisexual arousal. Those lower in curiosity had responses resembling those of homosexual men. Study 2 assessed mens (n=72) sexual arousal via genital responses and replicated findings of Study 1. Study 3 provided information on the validity on our measure of sexual curiosity by relating it to general curiosity and sexual sensation seeking (n=83). Based on their sexual arousal and personality, at least two groups of men identify as bisexual.

Physiological Evidence for a Mostly Heterosexual Orientation Among Men

A review of over 60 studies published from 1994 to 2012, covering 26 different samples from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, and the United States that included sufficient data for participants to be designated as mostly heterosexual (Kinsey 1s) concluded that such individuals showauniqueprofileof sexualandromanticcharacteristics that differentiate them as a distinctive sexual orientation (SavinWilliams & Vrangalova, in press). Mostly heterosexuals differed from two adjacent groups, exclusively heterosexuals and substantiallybisexuals, in reportingasmalldegreeofsame-sex sexual and/or romantic attraction, fantasies, and, occasionally, same-sex behavior. In addition, they constituted a substantial prevalence in the general population (the second most prevalent sexual orientation group, claimed by a mean of 7.6–9.5 % women and 3.6–4.1 % men), were relatively stable in their orientation over time, and felt that this sexuality was valid and meaningful to them. Onerecommendation fromthis reviewwas toassess whether a mostly heterosexual orientation is reflected in physiological sexual arousal—withspecificbenefitsaccrued if theanswerwas affirmative. Because all previous investigations of mostly heterosexuals have been based on self-report, an important question has not been addressed: Is a mostly heterosexualorientation basedonsubjective reportsof sexualandromanticattraction, fantasy, behavior, and identity manifested in physiological sexual responses? Given the general relationship between self-report andphysiologicalassessmentsofsexualorientation, it isexpected that the two would be congruent among most men. That is, unlike for many women, self-reported sexual orientation is usually strongly reflected in men’s sexual arousal (Bailey, 2009; Chivers, Seto, Lalumiere, Laan, & Grimbos, 2010). Reviewing physiological sexual arousal studies, we found that only a few includedmostly heterosexuals in their samples and none provided a separate analysis of this group. However, mostly heterosexual patterns of arousal were apparent among some heterosexual men. For example, one genital arousal study concluded that most men‘‘may possess a certain capacity for bisexual arousal’’ (Rieger, Chivers, & Bailey, 2005, p. 582); some heterosexual men showed an arousal pattern that can be interpreted as mostly heterosexual, with major arousal toward women and slight arousal toward men. Although an fMRI study scanned self-identified heterosexual and homosexual men, heterosexuals had‘‘exclusive or nearly exclusive sexual activity and feelings’’ for women (Safron et al., 2007, p. 23, emphasis added). A large majority of men show sexual arousal patterns consistentwith their self-reported sexualorientation (Bailey,2009). Thus, we expected that mostly heterosexual men would have considerable physiological sexual responses to females, similar to heterosexual men, and, in addition, some sexual response to males, more so than exclusively heterosexual men but less so than bisexual leaning heterosexual men. We had access to two previously published datasets from separate research programs that allowed us to test this congruence (for research design details, see Rieger & Savin-Williams, 2012; Rosenthal, Sylva, Safron, & Bailey, 2011, 2012). In thefirst study,dataassessing102men’spenile tumescence to erotic stimuli were collected with a focus on three groups: heterosexual, bisexual, and homosexual men (Rosenthal et al., 2011, 2012). This research included data on self-reported sexual attraction that allowed us to compare mostly heterosexuals to other men in their genital arousal patterns. R. C. Savin-Williams (&) G. Rieger Sex & Gender Lab, Department of Human Development, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA e-mail: savin-williams@cornell.edu

Still in Search of Bisexual Sexual Arousal: Comment on Cerny and Janssen (2011)

In a recent article, Cerny and Janssen (2011) reported the results ofanempirical studycomparingsexualarousalpatternsofbisexual men with those of homosexual and heterosexual men. They concluded:‘‘...bisexuality in men is associated with a unique and specific pattern of sexual arousal.’’ This conclusion contrasted with that of Rieger, Chivers, and Bailey (2005), who conducted a similar study with a larger sample and failed to find evidence that their bisexual sample had an arousal pattern that was unique, specificorbisexual.Rather,Riegeret al. found thatbisexualmenwerenomore likely toexhibitapatternofbisexualgenital arousal than were heterosexual or homosexual men, and that few men in any group had a genital arousal pattern that was plausiblybisexual (i.e., showingsubstantialarousal tobothmale and female stimuli). Cerny and Janssen (2011) supported their conclusion—that bisexual men have a unique, bisexual arousal pattern—using twomainanalyses.Thefirst (henceforth, theGroupMeansAnalysis) compared the average responses of bisexual, heterosexual, and homosexual men to several erotic audiovisual stimuli (i.e., films), including some featuring male homosexual activity and others featuring lesbian sexual activity. Relative arousal to the latter two categories of stimuli strongly distinguishes heterosexual and homosexual men (e.g., Chivers, Rieger, Latty, & Bailey, 2004; Sakheim, Barlow, Beck, & Abrahamson, 1985). Specifically, male homosexual stimuli elicit greater genital and selfreported arousal in homosexual men, whereas lesbian stimuli elicit greater arousal in heterosexual men. The second analysis (henceforth, the Bisexual Stimulus Analysis) compared the average responses of bisexual, heterosexual, and homosexual men to a so-called‘‘bisexual stimulus,’’in which a man simultaneously engaged in sexual activity with a woman and another man. We offer these observations concerning Cerny and Janssen’s (2011) methodology, results, and conclusions:

The Psychometric Structure of Items Assessing Autogynephilia

Autogynephilia, or paraphilic sexual arousal in a man to the thought or image of himself as a woman, manifests in a variety of different behaviors and fantasies. We examined the psychometric structure of 22 items assessing five known types of autogynephilia by subjecting them to exploratory factor analysis in a sample of 149 autogynephilic men. Results of oblique factor analyses supported the ability to distinguish five group factors with suitable items. Results of hierarchical factor analyses suggest that the five group factors were strongly underlain by a general factor of autogynephilia. Because the general factor accounted for a much greater amount of the total variance of the 22 items than did the group factors, the types of autogynephilia that a man has seem less important than the degree to which he has autogynephilia. However, the five types of autogynephilia remain conceptually useful because meaningful distinctions were found among them, including differential rates of endorsement and differential ability to predict other relevant variables like gender dysphoria. Factor-derived scales and subscales demonstrated good internal consistency reliabilities, and validity, with large differences found between autogynephilic men and heterosexual male controls. Future research should attempt to replicate our findings, which were mostly exploratory.

Bisexual Phenomena Among Gay-Identified Men.

A high proportion of self-identified gay men exhibit aspects of bisexuality during their lives. Some identify as bisexual before later identifying as gay; this has been called transitional bisexuality. Although many gay men report no attraction to women—or even sexual disgust toward them—others report some slight attraction to women. The latter have been studied as mostly homosexual men. We studied men with and without a history of transitional bisexuality, as well as mostly homosexual (i.e., those with Kinsey scores of 5) and completely homosexual (i.e., those with Kinsey scores of 6) men with respect to their sexual history with women, their current self-reported sexual arousal and disgust toward women and men, and their patterns of genital sexual arousal to female and male stimuli. Gay men with a history of transitional bisexuality generally lacked current sexual attraction and sexual arousal to women, compared with other gay men. Thus, transitional bisexuality among future gay men is mostly a matter of transitional bisexual identification. In contrast, mostly homosexual men showed statistically significant increases in genital arousal to female stimuli, compared with completely homosexual men.

Who are gynandromorphophilic men? Characterizing men with sexual interest in transgender women.

BACKGROUND Gynandromorphophilia (GAMP) is sexual interest in gynandromorphs (GAMs; colloquially, shemales). GAMs possess a combination of male and female physical characteristics. Thus, GAMP presents a challenge to conventional understandings of sexual orientation as sexual attraction to the male v. female form. Speculation about GAMP men has included the ideas that they are homosexual, heterosexual, or especially, bisexual. METHOD We compared genital and subjective sexual arousal patterns of GAMP men with those of heterosexual and homosexual men. We also compared these groups on their self-ratings of sexual orientation and sexual interests. RESULTS GAMP men had arousal patterns similar to those of heterosexual men and different from those of homosexual men. However, compared to heterosexual men, GAMP men were relatively more aroused by GAM erotic stimuli than by female erotic stimuli. GAMP men also scored higher than both heterosexual and homosexual men on a measure of autogynephilia. CONCLUSIONS Results provide clear evidence that GAMP men are not homosexual. They also indicate that GAMP men are especially likely to eroticize the idea of being a woman.