On Homophobia

The following is an excerpt from Roger R. Hock's Forty Studies That Changed Psychology: Explorations into the History of Psychological Research (6th Edition) that is an assigned reading for my psychology class. In the reading about Sigmund Freud's concept of ego defense mechanisms (defined by the book as "psychological 'weapons' that your ego uses to protect you from your self-created anxiety") and Anna Freud's (his daughter) elaborations on those mechanisms, a passage regarding homophobia caught my eye:

One fascinating study may have found supporting scientific evidence that homophobia, an irrational fear, avoidance, and prejudice toward gay and lesbian individuals, may be a reaction formation used to ward off the extreme anxiety caused by a person's own repressed homosexual tendencies (Adams, Wright, & Lohr, 1996). In this study, a group of men were given a written test to determine their level of homophobia and then divided into two groups: homophobic and nonhomophobic. Then participants were exposed to videos depicting explicit heterosexual gay, or lesbian sexual scenes, and while they viewed these videos they were monitored for physiological signs of sexual arousal. The only difference found between the groups was when they viewed the videos of gay males. In this condition, "The results indicate that hte homophobic men showed a significant increase in [arousal], but that the [nonhomophobic] men did not" (p. 443). In fact, 66% of the nonhomophobic group showed no significant signs of arousal while viewing the homosexual video, but only 20% of the homophobic group showed little or no evidence of arousal. Furthermore, when asked to rate their level of arousal, the homophobic men underestimated their degree of arousal in response to the homosexual video. This study's results are clearly consistent with Anna Freud's description of the defense mechanism of reaction formation and lend support for a possible explanation of violence targeted against gay individuals.

 Adams, H., Wright, L., & Lohr, B. (1996). Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal? Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 105(3), 440-445.