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Top/Bottom Sexual Self-labels and Empathizing–Systemizing Cognitive Styles Among Gay Men in China

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Abstract

Gay men across a variety of countries label themselves by their preferences for insertive anal intercourse or receptive anal intercourse. A “top” is defined as someone who prefers the insertive role, a “bottom” as someone who prefers the receptive role, and “versatile” as someone who has no preferences regarding anal sex role. Previous studies documented that tops showed a masculine profile and bottoms showed a feminine profile in gendered personality traits. In this study, we examined the association among sexual self-label groups and empathizing–systemizing (E–S) cognitive styles among 509 gay men across multiple cities in China. There were significant differences in systemizing among sexual self-label groups, with tops scoring higher on systemizing than bottoms and versatiles. Tops were more likely to have S > E and high E and S cognitive styles than bottoms. Bottoms were more likely to have E > S and low E and S cognitive styles than tops. There was a significant indirect effect of systemizing on sexual self-label through Self-MF. There was also a significant indirect effect of sexual self-label on systemizing through Self-MF. The findings suggest that sexual self-labels among adult gay and bisexual men may reflect more than preferences for anal sex.

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Notes

  1. Cohen's d was used as an effect size to indicate the standard difference between two means. Cohen's d was calculated as the difference between the means divided by the pooled SD (Cohen, 1988)

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported by Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education (13XJC190003), by Specialized Research Fund for the Doctoral Program of Higher Education (20130182120014), by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (SWU1309259), and by the Doctoral Scientific Fund (SWU1209312) of Southwest University, China.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality (Southwest University), Ministry of Education, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Lijun Zheng & Yong Zheng

  2. Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing, China

    Lijun Zheng & Yong Zheng

  3. Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Trevor A. Hart

  4. Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Trevor A. Hart

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  1. Lijun Zheng
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  2. Trevor A. Hart
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Correspondence to Lijun Zheng.

Appendix

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Table 3 Empathizing and systemizing items used in the study
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Zheng, L., Hart, T.A. & Zheng, Y. Top/Bottom Sexual Self-labels and Empathizing–Systemizing Cognitive Styles Among Gay Men in China. Arch Sex Behav 44, 1431–1438 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-014-0475-z

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