Sexual Orienation Stereotypy in the Distortion of Clinical Judgment

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Abstract
It has been suggested that if a person's sexual orientation is unconventional, their nonsexual psychological problems will be construed in sexual terms to a marked degree. An experiment is described in which undergraduates read a case study of a man troubled by depression, catastrophizing, heavy drinking, and other maladaptive behaviors not obviously related to his sexuality. Half the subjects were told that the patient had had several extramarital affairs, exclusively with men; the others, affairs exclusively with women. Blind content analyses of subjects responses revealed that when the men was described as having homosexual involvements, he was more likely to receive a diagnosis of sexual deviation or have his nonsexual diagnosis justified on the basis of homosexuality, more likely to have his sexual or marital life investigated, and more likely to have his sexuality construed as important in the etiology of his nonsexual psychological problems. The authors' analogue findings confirm cautions voiced by...

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