Kinsey Institute Research Articles

Birth order and sexual orientation in women.

One of the world's largest databases on human sexuality was used to investigate whether lesbians, like homosexual men, have a later birth order relative to heterosexual comparisons. The women (N > 5,000) were interviewed by investigators at the Kinsey Institute for Sex and Reproduction from 1938 to 1963. The women were dichotomously classified as lesbian (n = 257) or heterosexual (n = 5,008). No significant birth order effect was observed. Results support theories of gender-specific mechanisms in the development of sexual orientation in women and men.

Genital asymmetry in men.

This study examined genital asymmetry in a large sample of men. The probands were 6544 non-delinquent men who were interviewed by the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction from 1938 to 1963. The measures were four indicators of penile and scrotal asymmetry, along with self-reported handedness, from Kinsey's interview protocol. Most men reported some degree of lateral asymmetry in their flaccid penis and in their testicles; less asymmetry was reported for their erect penis. The asymmetry typically occurred in the left direction, and this pattern occurred in both right- and nonright-handers. However, this 'leftward' pattern was significantly less pronounced in nonright-handers. The results are discussed in relation to previous findings of genital asymmetry in men, the possible relationship of genital asymmetry to functional cerebral asymmetry, and recent data suggesting genital asymmetry may predict patterns of cognitive performance and genital/sexual organ cancers.

Handedness in homosexual and heterosexual men in the Kinsey interview data.

The relationship between sexual orientation and handedness in a large sample of men was examined. Subjects were 6544 nondelinquent men interviewed by the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction from 1938 to 1963. Subjects were classified as either homosexual (n = 1004) or heterosexual (n = 4579). Results failed to demonstrate a difference in handedness, with both groups having rates of non-right-handedness (i.e., 11-12%) approximately equal to establish norms. These findings do not replicate some recent studies indicating an increased level of non-right-handedness in homosexual men.

Aggression and personality: association with amino acids and monoamine metabolites.

Associations in 52 normal individuals were examined between plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) concentrations of tryptophan (Trp) and tyrosine, and concentrations of monoamine metabolites in the CSF, and scores on an aggression questionnaire, the Kinsey Institute Reaction List II, and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire. There was a significantly positive correlation between CSF 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) levels and extroverted aggression scores, and a significantly negative correlation between CSF 5-HIAA levels and introverted aggression scores. Males showed higher plasma Trp concentrations than females, and significantly positive correlations between plasma Trp concentrations and scores on extroverted aggression and the Eysenck E scale. Males, furthermore, showed a significantly negative correlation between CSF Trp levels and scores on the Eysenck P scale, and a significantly positive correlation between concentrations of 3-methoxy-4-hydroxy-phenylglycol in CSF and scores on moral aggression. These results suggest that central serotonin influences aggression in normal individuals through effects on personality.

A Researcher's Privilege: Does Any Hope Remain?

Scholars and subpoenas coexist uneasily. For at least a half century, formal demands for discovery of research results, or research in process, have posed an acute dilemma for the scholarly community. A scholar's unique academic research can, through judicial action, be wrested from the scholar and involved in often-lengthy litigation. Courts have struggled to balance the contending interests, particularly during the last quarter century. Sometimes the demands are granted, and sensitive material is required to be turned over to litigants. Other times, scholars have prevailed-usually on rather narrow, fact-based principles. The research topics that have triggered such demands by the judicial system have varied with the issues of the times. Perhaps the first such dispute involved FBI threats to subpoena highly sensitive material on sex research held by the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University. Since the Institute had pledged confidentiality to many of its research subjects, its officers insisted it could not comply with the FBI demand and would, if necessary, accept the consequences of such defiance. In the end, the FBI backed down and a legal resolution was not required.1 In the 1960s and 1970s, several research issues that reached the courts grew directly out of the Vietnam War.2 The years since then have brought cases involving demands for disclosure of research on subjects as varied as unsafe automobiles,3 medical devices,4 and employee morale in large public utilities.5 The 1990s have seen the focus of such litigation shift to research on cigarettes and their effects. Mounting pressures on the tobacco industry, chiefly through damage claims by former smokers or their families, or by states seeking to recover the costs of treating smokers, have intensified the potential importance of

Explaining homosexuality: philosophical issues, and who cares anyhow?

Standard behavioral and biological attempts to explain the etiology of homosexuality are surveyed. These include genetic, physiological (e.g., hormonal), constitutional (e.g., wrong pubic hair configurations), childhood experience, parenting, and psychoanalytic accounts. These are criticized from a number of perspectives, including inadequate conceptualization of homosexuality and heterosexuality. The use of path analysis to assess etiological accounts is examined, with particular attention being paid to the Kinsey Institute's Sexual Preference efforts. Drawing from the sociology of science, recent philosophical work on the growth of scientific knowledge, and historical considerations, the legitimacy of homosexual etiology as a scientific research question is examined. It is argued that homosexual etiology is a degenerative research program. The research program's conceptual crudity with respect to sexual identity and sexual orientation precludes it from making any scientific contribution. Thus the claim that homosexual etiology is a legitimate scientific issue is plausible only against the background of a set of late Victorian normative assumptions about "normal love," some surrogate thereof, or a political agenda. Implications of the homosexuality etiology case study for more general philosophical treatments of explanation are considered briefly.

Classroom Concerns of Gay and Lesbian Students: The Invisible Minority

They are in the average college classroom. They may not look or act different, but they are there. Estimates of the percentage of gay and lesbian students in the average college classroom, based on a series of frequently cited studies by the Kinsey Institute, hover around ten percent (Evans and Wall 1991). More recent studies estimate percentages ranging from one to four percent (Painton 1993). Unless they disclose their iden tity, however, gay and lesbian students are an invisible minority. Professors, then, may not think about their special needs or take advantage of their per spectives. Discussion of gay, lesbian, and bisex ual student issues in the literature on college teaching has been almost non existent. In the past few years, several institutions, such as the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Rutgers Uni versity, The Ohio State University, the University of California at Santa Cruz, and Yale University, have conducted studies of the campus climate for gay, lesbian, and bisexual students. Al though the main focus of these studies is on the overall environment, most have treated some teaching issues. For exam

Sex and Morality in the U.S.: An Empirical Enquiry under the Auspices of the Kinsey Institute.

This book presents the major findings from a national survey of American sexual norms and experiences. The survey was conducted in 1970 under the auspices of the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University and is based on interviews with more than 3000 adults. The authors incorporate the data and interpretations from the interviews in this volume. SEX AND MORALITY IN THE US describes the degree to which survey respondents judged prostitution masturbation premarital sex extramarital sex and homosexuality to be morally right or wrong; it then examines the extent to which these judgments were altered by sexual experiences reported in self-administered questionnaires and by respondents personal social and demographic characteristics. The authors rely heavily on the statistics of path analysis explaining variations in their respondents sexual norms their reported involvement in premarital sex their perception of changes in sexual norms and the formal and informal sanctions they would like to see applied to violators of sexual norms. The book reminds the reader of how important norms are in comprehending human conduct. It also draws attention to the question of how societys members come to know the prevailing norms. One of the books principal contributions is that it calls into question whether public awareness of the prevailing state of morality is an actual reflection of the actual state of affairs. In the 1960s and 1970s it was widely believed that American society was experiencing a sexual revolution. However the authors stress the absence of empirical evidence from their survey suggesting that a major change in sexual morals had taken place. Prevailing norms governing sexual conduct were mistakenly believed by many to be far more liberal than they really were. This radical bias in public perception was facilitated by the change in legal norms that allowed for increasing explicitness in the handling of sexual matters in the arts and mass media. It was also greatly strengthened by well-publicized studies of sexual behavior based on samples of individuals that were not truly representative of the population. No attempt has been made to assess the books findings and analysis in light of more recent research. It is published as it was prepared and written in the late 1970s.

Sex and Morality in the U.S.: An Empirical Enquiry under the Auspices of the Kinsey Institute.

Sex and Morality in the U.S.: An Empirical Enquiry under the Auspices of the Kinsey Institute.

Sex research. Kinsey Institute director sues Indiana University.

Sex research. Kinsey Institute director sues Indiana University.

Book Review Adolescence and Puberty (Kinsey Institute Series.) Edited by John Bancroft and June Machover Reinisch. 303 pp. New York, Oxford University Press, 1990. $39.95.

Book Review Adolescence and Puberty (Kinsey Institute Series.) Edited by John Bancroft and June Machover Reinisch. 303 pp. New York, Oxford University Press, 1990. $39.95.

Sex and Morality in the U.S.: An Empirical Enquiry under the Auspices of the Kinsey Institute.

Sex and Morality in the U.S.: An Empirical Enquiry under the Auspices of the Kinsey Institute.

The Kinsey Institute new report on sex: what you must know to be sexually literate

The information provided in this report will enable readers to have an understanding of human sexuality. It tackles such issues as sexual dysfunction, puberty and sexual development, bisexuality and homosexuality, contraception and parenthood, sexually transmitted diseases and reproductive health, sex and ageing and male and female anatomy. June Reinisch has been a director of the Kinsey Institute since 1982 and is a researcher in human sexuality and sexual and psychosexual development.

A Critique of the Kinsey Institute/Roper Organization National Sex Knowledge Survey

The Kinsey Institute New Report on Sex: What You Must Know to Be Sexually Literate by June M. Reinisch (with Ruth Beasley) is mainly a question-and-answer presentation of information on sexual behavior, contraception, and sexually transmitted diseases. With clear text and helpful illustrations, it will serve as a valuable reference work for nonprofessionals. The book also reports on the Kinsey Institute/ Roper Organization National Sex Knowledge Survey. Although occupying only the first of 20 chapters, the sexual test has been the focus of both the book's promotion and of the media's coverage of the volume (Angier 1990; Chicago Tribune 1990; Dolan 1990).1 The Kinsey/Roper Sex Knowledge Survey is an 18-item test of basic sexual knowledge designed by the Kinsey Institute and administered to a national sample of 1,974 adults by the Roper Organization in 1989. As is typical of the quality surveying used in the Roper Report series, the demographic profile of the sample is representative of the adults living in households in the United States. About 5-7 minutes into the survey, respondents were asked to fill out the sexual test as a self-completion supplement. Eighty-eight percent completed the sexual test, a very good response rate for a supplement on such a sensitive topic. On the basis of the Kinsey/Roper Sex Knowledge Survey, the Kinsey Institute concludes that unfortunately, Americans failed the

The Female Nude: Pornography, Art, and Sexuality

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Female Nude: Pornography, Art, and SexualityLynda NeadLynda Nead Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Signs Volume 15, Number 2Winter, 1990 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/494586 Views: 167Total views on this site Citations: 20Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1990 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Shari M. Huhndorf Scenes from the Fringe: Gendered Violence and the Geographies of Indigenous Feminism, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 46, no.33 (Mar 2021): 561–587.https://doi.org/10.1086/712045GREGORY DA SILVA BALTHAZAR, FABIANA DE AMORIM MARCELLO Corpo, gênero e imagem: desafios e possibilidades aos estudos feministas em educação, Revista Brasileira de Educação 23, no.00 (Sep 2018).https://doi.org/10.1590/s1413-24782018230047Jamie Jelinski Without Restriction? Inuit Tattooing and the Dr. Wyn Rhys-Jones Photograph Collection at the NWT Archives, Visual Anthropology 30, no.44 (Jul 2017): 344–367.https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.2017.1340065Tim Gregory The maintenance of white heteronormativity in porn films that use Australia as an exotic location, Porn Studies 4, no.11 (Jan 2017): 88–104.https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2016.1262276 Introduction, (Jan 2014): 1–26.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377030-001 Archives of Pain, (Jan 2014): 27–58.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377030-002 Speaking Sex/Speaking Race, (Jan 2014): 59–82.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377030-003 Race-Pleasures, (Jan 2014): 83–106.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377030-004 Laughing Matters, (Jan 2014): 107–127.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377030-005 On Refusal, (Jan 2014): 128–145.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377030-006 Conclusion, (Jan 2014): 146–151.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377030-007 Notes, (Jan 2014): 153–179.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377030-008 Bibliography, (Jan 2014): 181–211.https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822377030-009Marina Wallace The Fluidity of Acceptability: Seduced by Art and Pornography and the Kinsey Institute Collection, (Jan 2013): 274–286.https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137367938_15Klara Arnberg Under the Counter, Under the Radar? The Business and Regulation of the Pornographic Press in Sweden 1950–1971, Enterprise & Society 13, no.22 (Feb 2015): 350–377.https://doi.org/10.1017/S1467222700011228Klara Arnberg Under the Counter, Under the Radar? The Business and Regulation of the Pornographic Press in Sweden 1950–1971, Enterprise and Society 13, no.22 (Feb 2015): 350–377.https://doi.org/10.1093/es/khr080Lucy Blaney Incomplete Resistance, Feminist Media Studies 11, no.44 (Dec 2011): 433–449.https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2011.555962Stephen Brooke War and the Nude: The Photography of Bill Brandt in the 1940s, The Journal of British Studies 45, no.0101 (Dec 2012): 118–138.https://doi.org/10.1086/497058 References, (Jan 2000): 379–462.https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-012487460-2/50013-1Melanie G. Wiber Undulating women and erect men: Visual imagery of gender and progress in illustrations of human evolution, Visual Anthropology 7, no.11 (Jan 1994): 1–20.https://doi.org/10.1080/08949468.1994.9966633

Review of Sex and Morality in the U.S.: An Empirical Enquiry Under the Auspices of the Kinsey Institute.

Review of Sex and Morality in the U.S.: An Empirical Enquiry Under the Auspices of the Kinsey Institute.

Sex and morality in the U.S: an empirical enquiry under the auspices of the Kinsey Institute

Sex and morality in the U.S: an empirical enquiry under the auspices of the Kinsey Institute

Race versus social class differences in sexual behavior: A follow-up test of the [formula omitted] dimension

Following our earlier paper on race differences in sexual behavior ( J. P. Rushton & A. F. Bogaert, 1987, Journal of Research in Personality, 21, 529–551), we analyze additional data from the Institute for Sex Research which indicates that in terms of sexual restraint, college-educated whites non-college-educated whites college-educated blacks on measures such as speed of occurrence of premarital, marital, and extramarital sexual experiences, number of sexual partners, frequency of intercourse, speed and incidence of pregnancy, and rapidity of the menstrual cycle. As such, the data suggest that race may be a more powerful predictor of sexual behavior than educational level or social class. This ordering was predicted from a gene-based evolutionary theory of r K reproductive strategies in which a trade-off occurs between gamete production and social behaviors such as intelligence, law-abidingness, and parental care.

Sex and Scholarship:

The first official transaction of the Institute for Sex Research, when it was incorporated in 1947, was to purchase the research materials and erotica collected by Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey. These materials now form the core of the largest collection of materials relating to human sexual behavior. The library, art, film, and photograph collections are open to qualified scholars and professionals with demonstrable research needs. Although the collections are not open to the general public, access to information contained in the collections is possible through the Information Services Department of the Institute.

Reply to Boor and Duncan

Ours a 'national random sample' in the usual, rather imprecise, sense of the term employed in the social sciences. For instance, a recent (sampling also began in 1983) estimate prevalence and incidence of mental disorder in the United States initiated by the National Instirure of Mental Health is a five-site collaborative effort (like ours) and included Baltimore, MD, Durham, NC, Los Angeles, CA, New Haven, CT, and St. Louis, MOW (four of the NIMH cities were different from ours); see Siegel, Sorenson, Golding. Burnam, and Stein ( 5 ) , p. 1143. This NIMH study exclusively urban and, although more substantially funded than ours, suffers from a noncompletion rate of 3296, failure to fill out questionnaires complerely, erc., yet when the whole study statistically pasted together it will be treated by the field as sufficient to accomplish its appointed task. W e have examined the results of a number of studies comparable to ours in being represented as 'national' and 'random', and we nore that, when the p u b lished results are related to ours, there usually reasonable agreement between the two data-sets (e.g., in the Siegel, et a!. survey, 8.7% of their whites reported sexual assault before the age of 16 vs approximately 16% of our ( 3 ) sample of 1986 who reported childhood sexual contact with an adult, and 10% of our sample who reported childhood sexual contact with a man lthe difference berween our and Siegel, et al.'s parameters partially explained by their exclusion of voluntwy child/adult sexual interaction]; 36% of those assaulted in Siegel, er al.'s report were boys vs approximately a. third in ours). What we attempted and how well we fared detailed in the method section of our report ( to a considerably greater degree than the oft-cited Kinsey Institute surveys). Just about every empirical smdy in the social sciences, including ours, can be criticized for various shorrcomings. W e believe that our resulcs are 'close to target', or 'true' in the usual sense of the word in the discipline. If Boor ( 1 ) and Duncan ( 4 ) do not believe it, let them spend their nickel and demonstrate otherwise. Boor ( 1 ) takes the position that our results might imply that heterosexuals ought ro be taught to accept homosexuals in the military as much as homosexuals do. Would he also suggest that they mighr imply that women should be taught to accept heterosexual voyeurism as much as men do? 'Homosexual mentality', as indexed by almost every item in our report, almost 180 degrees at variance from 'heterosexual mentality'. Every civilization has come to the same conclusion: homosexual practitioners engage in pathology and generate personal and social pathology as a consequence. Our results provide no reaFon to reject this appraisal. Duncan ( 4 ) apparently believes that ( a ) homosexuals are a minority, ( b ) all minorities deserve protecrion from the majority, and (c) therefore ought to be allowed into the military. Drug abusers, child molesters, and thieves also form 'minorities'; do members of these groups 'deserve protection from the majority'? Hardly! Ail contraire, the majority has both a right and obligation to protect itself against the socially disruptive effects of such.