BACKGROUND AND AIMS Sexual addiction, also known as hypersexual disorder, is associated with serious psychosocial problems for many people. METHODS This study used questionnaires to investigate the effects of gender, sexual orientation and attachment (avoidance and anxiety) on sexual compulsion among 100 heterosexual and homosexual men and women. RESULTS A positive correlation was found bet...

Because very little is known about heterosexual identity development, this study assesses and describes sexual orientation questioning processes of heterosexual-identified women and offers a comparison of these processes with those employed by their sexual-minority counterparts. Participants included 333 female college students (ages 18-23; M = 19.2): 228 participants primarily identified as "e...

Gay men and lesbians must make decisions about disclosure of their sexual orientation. Past research has focused on an individual's overall level of disclosure or on disclosure to a specific subset of individuals. This study used a new measure, the Disclosure Grid, to assess the disclosure patterns of 89 gay men and 55 lesbians across their entire social network. In addition to assessing disclo...

Patterns of genital arousal to sexual stimuli are somewhat different between men and women. Heterosexual males and homosexual males show clear category specific arousal that is consistent with their self-reported sexual preference. However, heterosexual women do not show this category specificity. In the present study, we attempted to measure a person's automatic appraisals of stimuli with resp...

BACKGROUND Growing evidence documents elevated behavioral risk among sexual-minorities, including gay, lesbian, and bisexual individuals; however, tests of biological or psychological indicators of stress as explanations for these disparities have not been conducted. METHODS Data were from the 2005-2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and included 9662 participants; 9254 het...

The current study sought to answer three key questions about explaining the emotion of regret in the domain of casual sex: Are sex differences in sexual regret robust or attenuated in a highly egalitarian culture? What proximate psychological variables might explain sex differences in sexual regret? And what accounts for within-sex variation in experiences of sexual regret about casual sex. We ...

Many people believe that sexual orientation (homosexuality vs. heterosexuality) is determined by education and social constraints. There are, however, a large number of studies indicating that prenatal factors have an important influence on this critical feature of human sexuality. Sexual orientation is a sexually differentiated trait (over 90% of men are attracted to women and vice versa). In ...

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth experience elevated levels of depressive symptoms compared to heterosexual youth. This study examined how differences in depressive symptoms between heterosexual and LGB youth developed from late childhood to early adulthood. The association between sexual orientation and depressive symptoms was estimated from age 11 to 22 using data from the TRacking Adol...