Re-Examining Evelyn Hooker: Setting the Record Straight with Comments on Schumm's (2012) Reanalysis

Abstract

Evelyn Hooker's research comparing the mental health of 30 male homosexuals to 30 male heterosexuals may be the most influential study in the history of social science. The American Psychological Association (APA) claims her work was the major reason it began advocating for acceptance of homosexuality. It led the American Psychiatric Association in 1973 to eliminate homosexuality from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. And it impacted the U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 legalization of sodomy in Lawrence v Texas.

Hooker reportedly believed experts would be unable to distinguish homosexuals from heterosexuals on psychological tests. Re-examination of her work indicates that Hooker's study was neither rigorous nor reliable. Among other problems, homosexual subjects were easily identified on test protocols; her reports of how she obtained her samples were incomplete and contradictory; and her study generated results supportive of obsession/compulsivity in homosexuals.

Thus Hooker's study was seriously flawed. Moreover, because it was marketed by the APA as central in transforming homosexual activity from an illness/crime into acceptable behavior—yet Hooker did not correct those who mischaracterized her work—APA misrepresentations of Hooker over the past 40 years appear to be more in line with ideology than science.

KEYWORDS:

• American Psychological Association
• Evelyn Hooker
• homosexuality
• mental health
• misrepresentation

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Thanks to Kay Proctor for reviewing and editing the manuscript.

Notes

Tschuprow's T is typically no longer used because of its shortcomings as an interpretable measure of association and because it does not account for the ordinal nature of the data.