Heterosexual Bias in Psychological Research on Lesbianism and Male Homosexuality (1979-1983), Utilizing the Bibliographic and Taxonomic System of Morin (1977)

Alan T. Watters

California State University, Sacramento

ABSTRACT. Utilizing the concept of heterosexual bias, recent research on homosexuality is evaluated to see if this bias has lessoned in recent years. In 1977 the suggestion was made that a new vision of homosexuality as an alternate and equally valid lifestyle would result in changes in the questions posted, the data collected, and the interpretations made in research on homosexuality. Recent journal article abstracts are examined and weighed to find the extend to which they reflect a change in the social values of the behavior under study. These findings are compared to those of the original study in 1977 and assessed to see if the predicted changes have come about. Strong evidence of such a change was found.

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RESULTS

The results of Morin's investigation of research on lesbianism and male homosexuality from 1967 through 1974 are shown in Appendix 1, which is a reproduction of his Table 1 (Morin, 1977, p. 632). My findings, using his taxonomy of research questions, covering 1979 to 1983, are presented in Appendix 2. I modified his taxonomy somewhat by dropping categories in which no studies were found, and by adding many new categories reflecting a new diversity of topics being researched.

Research questions were categorized under five general rubrics: assessment/diagnosis (1%), causes (15%), adjustment (9%), special topics (56%), and attitudes towards homosexuality (19%). Morin's statistics for these same categories were, respectively, 16%, 30%, 27%, 20%, and 7%. I found a total of 185 questions being investigated in 166 studies. Morin's results were 170 questions in 139 studies for his 8-year period. A comparison showed that the average frequency of studies per year came very close to doubling (17.4 to 33.2) over the approximately 10-year interval between the two studies (1967-1974 to 1979-1983).