New Studies Offer Clearer Picture of Human Sexuality
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A trio of recent studies by Cornell’s Sex & Gender Laboratory, directed by Ritch Savin-Williams, professor of human development, shed new light on sexual orientation and its repercussions on a person’s physical, mental, and social health. The first, published last winter in Archives of Sexual Behavior, determined that human sexual orientation is best represented as a continuum that has two new categories— ”mostly heterosexual” and “mostly gay/lesbian”—along with heterosexual, bisexual, or gay/lesbian. The findings suggest that sexual orientation is not just a one-dimensional continuum with preference for the opposite sex on one end and for the same sex on the other. Rather, it is more likely two continuums—one for depicting a person’s orientation to the same sex and the other for the opposite sex, argue Savin-Williams and lead author Zhana Vrangalova, human development graduate student. “In other words, having more same-sex sexuality does not necessarily mean having less opposite-sex sexuality,” SavinWilliams said. The authors analyzed 1,676 responses to their online sexuality survey of adults. Twenty percent of women and 9 percent of men identified themselves as “mostly heterosexual,” lending evidence for a more nuanced 5-point scale for depicting sexual orientation. They argue that more accurate “in-between” labels for sexuality will help investigators to better understand health challenges unique to people of differing sexual orientations. More recently, Savin-Williams and human development postdoctoral associate Gerulf Rieger discovered that pupil dilation is an accurate indicator of one’s sexual attraction— the first scientific evidence of this phenomenon. The researchers used a specialized infrared lens to measure pupillary changes as study participants watched erotic videos. Pupils were found to widen most when a person watched erotic videos of someone they found attractive, revealing where they were on the sexual spectrum from heterosexual to homosexual. Previous research explored these mechanisms either by simply asking people about their sexuality or by using such invasive physiological measures as assessing their genital arousal. “With this new technology, we are able to explore sexual orientation of people who would never participate in a study on genital arousal, such as people from traditional cultures,” said Rieger of the findings, published in August in PloS ONE. “This will give us a much better understanding of how sexuality is expressed across the planet.” In a third study, also by Savin-Williams and Rieger, researchers uncovered an
overlooked contributor to poor mental health in teens. Regardless of their sexual orientation, they found in a study published in Archives of Sexual Behavior, teens who do not fit behavioral norms for their gender are not as happy as their gender-conforming peers. Thus, it may be the effects of not conforming to gender stereotypes, rather than sexual orientation, that drive the increased mental health risks found among nonheterosexual youth. “We need to rethink how sexual orientation relates to health—too much emphasis has been put on a nonheterosexual orientation itself being detrimental,” Rieger said. For their research, Rieger and Savin-Williams analyzed data from 475 rural high school students who participated in a survey about their sexual orientation, preference for maletypical or female-typical activities, and psychological well-being. The researchers found that the nonheterosexual youth in the study were more likely to violate gender norms for behavior, feelings, activities, and interests, but so did some heterosexual youth. The effect of being a feminine boy or a masculine girl was similar regardless of sexual orientation— both childhood and adolescent gender nonconformity were negatively linked to well-being. The effects on mental health, however, were small, which the researchers say may explain why most same-sex-oriented individuals experience few mental health problems. “Perhaps some adolescents are harassed not so much because they are gay,” said Savin-Williams, “but because they violate ‘acceptable’ ways of acting. If so, sexism may be a more pervasive problem among youth than homophobia.” Karene Booker, extension support specialist in the Department of Human Development, contributed reporting to this piece.
Ritch Savin-Williams Volume 40, Number 2
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