An inkblot for sexual preference: A semantic variant of the Affect Misattribution Procedure

Abstract

A newly developed Semantic Misattribution Procedure (SMP), a semantic variant of the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP), was used in three studies as an indirect measure of sexual interest. Using a known-group approach, homosexual men (Studies 1 and 2), heterosexual men (Studies 1 to 3) and heterosexual women (Study 3) were asked to guess the meaning of briefly presented Chinese ideographs as “sexual” or “not sexual”. The ideographs were preceded by briefly presented primes depicting male and female individuals of varying sexual maturity. As hypothesised, the frequency of “sexual” responses increased after priming with pictures of individuals of the preferred sex and increasing sexual maturation. The SMP showed satisfactory reliability and convergent validity as indicated by correlations with direct and two indirect measures of sexual interest. In two further studies, the hypothesised pattern was replicated whereas a standard AMP with the identical prime stimuli did not produce this result. The potential usefulness of semantic variants of the AMP is discussed.

Keywords:

• Affect Misattribution Procedure
• Sexual preference
• Indirect measure
• Semantic priming

Notes

¹As this index describes the critical difference between male and female sexually mature primes that also drives the interaction effect in the ANOVA, it was screened for outliers (mean frequency of ‘sexual’ responses for each sexual interest group±3SD). One participant was identified as outlier. Eliminating his data did not alter the results. Identical procedures were employed also for Studies 2 (2 outliers) and 3 (4 outliers) with the same results.

²As this means that there was only one measurement (either SMP or AMP) for each participant, the two could not be directly compared. If there had been no order effect, the unique contribution of the SMP, the AMP and their interaction to predict sexual interest could have been estimated. Despite the order effect such analyses were conducted as control analyses. These analyses test the incremental specificity of the SMP rather conservatively as the AMP was strongly contaminated by the previous SMP for half of the participants. Results showed that both the SMP, β=.35, p<.001, and the AMP, β=.25, p<.001 independently predicted sexual interest but not their interaction. However, due to the order effect this result is difficult to interpret.