Abstract
Viewing time tasks using still pictures to assess age and gender sexual interests have been well validated and are commonly used. The use of film clips in a viewing time task would open up interesting possibilities for the study of sexual interest toward sexual targets or activities that are not easily captured in still pictures. We examined the validity of a viewing time task using film clips to assess sexual interest toward male and female targets, in a sample of 52 young adults. Film clips produced longer viewing times than still pictures. For both men and women, the indices derived from the film viewing time task were able to distinguish individuals who identified as homosexual (14 men, 8 women) from those who identified as heterosexual (15 men, 15 women), and provided comparable group differentiation as indices derived from a viewing time task using still pictures. Men’s viewing times were more gender-specific than those of women. Viewing times to film clips were correlated with participants’ ratings of sexual appeal of the same clips, and with viewing times to pictures. The results support the feasibility of a viewing time measure of sexual interest that utilizes film clips and, thus, expand the types of sexual interests that could be investigated (e.g., sadism, biastophilia).
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Notes
The Editor noted that we used a “post-p approach to data analysis.” The reader interested in “statistical significance” can examine the 95% CI for that purpose. In this particular case, the 95% CI for the AUC do not include .50 (a value indicating no difference between the two groups); thus, the group difference can be considered statistically significant at p < .05.
The results are available from the corresponding author upon request.
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Acknowledgements
Funding for this project was provided by grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the University of Lethbridge, the American Institute of Bisexuality, and a Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR) Banting Postdoctoral Fellowship (K. Babchishin). We thank Danny Krupp for his insightful suggestions on the manuscript.
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Lalumière, M.L., Babchishin, K.M. & Ebsworth, M. The Use of Film Clips in a Viewing Time Task of Sexual Interests. Arch Sex Behav 47, 627–635 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1108-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-017-1108-0