Cookies on this website

We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website. If you click 'Accept all cookies' we'll assume that you are happy to receive all cookies and you won't see this message again. If you click 'Reject all non-essential cookies' only necessary cookies providing core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility will be enabled. Click 'Find out more' for information on how to change your cookie settings.

Abstract Ambiphilic (or bisexual) men describe feelings of sexual attraction to both men and women. However, physiological measures of arousal have failed to show a consistent pattern of arousal to both genders. We measured men’s automatic associations between the concept of sex (represented by words) and the concepts of men versus women (represented by images) via the Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a priming task. On the IAT, gynephilic men (N = 32) were faster for women-sex pairings, androphilic men (N = 18) were faster for men-sex pairings, while ambiphilic men (N = 20) showed no bias toward either gender. We then isolated the concepts of “men” and “women” by comparing them separately against neutral images. In contrast to both the gynephilic or androphilic men, ambiphilic men showed sexual associations to both men and women. On the priming task, ambiphilic men showed faster responses to sex words, but slower responses to not-sex words, when primed with pictures of either men or women compared to when primed by neutral images. The results from all the experimental tasks suggest that ambiphilic men have a pattern of sexual association that is different from both gynephilic and androphilic men and represents a sexual attraction to both men and women.

Original publication

DOI

10.1007/s10508-019-01552-6

Type

Journal article

Journal

Archives of Sexual Behavior

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Publication Date

02/2020

Volume

49

Pages

503 - 515