Using Startle Eye Blink to Measure the Affective Component of Antigay Bias

Abstract

The underlying motivations of antigay attitudes are not fully understood. One component of antigay bias in particular, the affective component, has not been thoroughly investigated because of the difficulty of accurately assessing affective responses. We investigated the potential for physiologically measuring this affective component, which we describe as homophobia, specifically using startle eye blink methodology. Two studies (n = 158 heterosexual men over two studies) were conducted in which participants' responses to paper-and-pencil measures of homophobia were compared with their startle magnitude while viewing nude or seminude photographic stimuli of individual men and individual women (Study 1), and gay couples, lesbian couples, and heterosexual couples (Study 2). The results of Studies 1 and 2 clearly established a link between negative attitudes toward homosexual individuals and a negative physiological reaction toward viewing nude men and gay couples. In addition, erotophobia was found to interact with homophobia in predicting this affective response.