Sexual Attraction to Both Genders in Ambiphilic Men: Evidence from Implicit Cognitions

Robert J Snowden,Aimee Mckinnon,Nicola S Gray,Ellen Fitton

doi:10.1007/s10508-019-01552-6

Robert J Snowden, Aimee Mckinnon + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-019-01552-6

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Abstract

Ambiphilic (or bisexual) men describe feelings of sexual attraction to both men and women. However, physiological measures of arousal have failed to show a consistent pattern of arousal to both genders. We measured men’s automatic associations between the concept of sex (represented by words) and the concepts of men versus women (represented by images) via the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a priming task. On the IAT, gynephilic men (N = 32) were faster for women-sex pairings, androphilic men (N = 18) were faster for men-sex pairings, while ambiphilic men (N = 20) showed no bias toward either gender. We then isolated the concepts of “men” and “women” by comparing them separately against neutral images. In contrast to both the gynephilic or androphilic men, ambiphilic men showed sexual associations to both men and women. On the priming task, ambiphilic men showed faster responses to sex words, but slower responses to not-sex words, when primed with pictures of either men or women compared to when primed by neutral images. The results from all the experimental tasks suggest that ambiphilic men have a pattern of sexual association that is different from both gynephilic and androphilic men and represents a sexual attraction to both men and women.

Highlights

The National Health Interview Survey (Ward, Dahlhamer, Galinsky, & Joestl, 2014) estimated that 0.7% of Americans classified themselves as bisexual or ambiphilic. Gates (2011) estimated that around 1.8% of the U.S population identify themselves as ambiphilic (1.4% for men and 2.2% for women), while Copen, Chandra, and Febo-Vazquez (2016) report higher figures (2.0% and 5.5%, respectively)
Computer-assisted self-interviewing where the person did not have to report their sexuality explicitly to an interviewer. This may imply the presence of implicit biases against ambiphilia even in those individuals who report this form of sexual interest
Ambiphilia has remained “hidden” in comparison (MacDowall, 2009) and individuals appear to suffer greater and unique forms of prejudice from many sources including “academicians and scholars, activists in lesbian and gay communities, and the popular press” (Brewster & Moradi, 2010). In part, such prejudices may arise from the idea that people reporting ambiphilia are “confused, experimenting, or in denial about their true sexual orientation” (Giaba, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

The National Health Interview Survey (Ward, Dahlhamer, Galinsky, & Joestl, 2014) estimated that 0.7% of Americans classified themselves as bisexual or ambiphilic (sexually attracted to both men and women). Gates (2011) estimated that around 1.8% of the U.S population identify themselves as ambiphilic (1.4% for men and 2.2% for women), while Copen, Chandra, and Febo-Vazquez (2016) report higher figures (2.0% and 5.5%, respectively). Ambiphilia has remained “hidden” in comparison (MacDowall, 2009) and individuals appear to suffer greater and unique forms of prejudice from many sources including “academicians and scholars, activists in lesbian and gay communities, and the popular press” (Brewster & Moradi, 2010). In part, such prejudices may arise from the idea that people reporting ambiphilia are “confused, experimenting, or in denial about their true sexual orientation” (Giaba, 2017). Research into ambiphilia is needed to counter such prejudicial thoughts and to examine the pattern of sexual attraction in ambiphilic individuals

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