April 30th 2012.

Researchers found that among the college freshmen in their study, more than one-fifth of those who described themselves as very straight showed signs of covert homosexuality on the me-cued trials. And these “discrepant” (secretly gay) students happened to be the ones most likely to have expressed anti-gay sentiments on the pre-test survey.

Should we trust this interpretation of the data? In the Times op-ed, the authors claim that the reaction-time task “reliably distinguishes between self-identified straight individuals and those who self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual.” Their formal write-up of the work for the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology is a bit less sanguine on the method, citing just one other study that has used this approach, and saying it “showed moderate correspondence with participants’ self-reported sexual orientation.”
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Read the whole story at:

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/04/homophobic_maybe_you_re_gay_the_new_york_times_on_a_new_study_of_secret_sexuality_.single.html

By Daniel Engber