Abstract
An unambiguous measurement of the rate of nonheterosexuality in the male population (male bisexuality and homosexuality) is essential to estimate the health risks associated with same-sex sexual behavior and to scale social and health programs for these citizens. However, self-reported questionnaires on explicit measures of sexual orientation yield significant underestimations of nonheterosexuality. A necessary prerequisite for nonheterosexual preference is androphilia (sexual-erotic attraction to males), which can be explored through psychological tests. This study, using a pilot sample, investigates the possibility to inventory the frequency of male androphilia in the general population through a sexual preference implicit association test (sp-IAT). This test is a classical IAT that is based on an association of pictures and words and is easily portable. First we conducted a preliminary validation of the specific IAT protocol on 24 control subjects; then, we examined a sample of 150 adult males in Italy as a pilot study. The subjects responded to the sp-IAT and completed the explicit Kinsey scale questionnaire. Kinsey scale scores and D value of sp-IAT for both preliminary and pilot sample. On the explicit Kinsey scale, 2.7% of the sample declared themselves to be sexually attracted to men, corresponding to previous explicit samplings of the Italian homosexual male population. However, the sp-IAT identified that 11.3% of self-declared gynephilic heterosexuals showed a moderate to strong androphilia with a significant effect size (D) always below -0.2, and another 5.6% of the heterosexual sample showed no preference for females (D between -0.2 and 0). The Kinsey questionnaire strongly dichotomized the responses as either attracted to females or attracted to men, whereas the sp-IAT showed a wider distribution of responses from gynephilia to androphilia. In conclusion, the sp-IAT could be a novel and unambiguous instrument useful to ascertain androphilia population prevalence as a proxy for possible male nonheterosexuality. Camperio Ciani A and Battaglia U. Implicit measurements of sexual preference in self-declared heterosexual men: A pilot study on the rate of androphilia in Italy. J Sex Med 2014;11:2207-2217.
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