Abstract
Sexual interest in animals (zoophilia) is a scant investigated topic owing partially to difficulties in assessing the behavior outside of a clinical setting. While there have been previous attempts to categorize individuals with a sexual interest in animals into classification systems, this requires extensive clinical interviews and psychometric testing. Previous classifications also lack clarity on the adjacent concept of furryism (i.e., interest in anthropomorphized animals) and how it may be related to zoophilia. As there are currently no validated psychometric measures of zoophilia, individuals with a sexual interest in animals are a challenging population to research and may be underdetected in clinical settings. The central aim of the present study was to examine the measurement and correlates of sexual attraction to nonhuman animals through the development and refinement of psychometric and visual stimulus measures of animal sexual interest. Participants included 1,228 respondents (72% zoophilic and 35% furries; 67% men and 22.9% women) recruited from the online community. The results indicated that a Sexual Interest in Animals-Self-Report (SIA-SR) scale had four distinct subscales with excellent discrimination for self-reported zoophilia. Moreover, endorsement of sexual interest in horses and dogs from visual stimuli was most common among the individuals in the sample, while dog and horse sexual and romantic attractiveness ratings also had the largest and most consistent associations with SIA-SR scores and self-reported zoophilia. The results contribute to a greater understanding of the sexual interest patterns for persons with zoophilia and have implications for theory, future research, and clinical practice.
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Notes
Ratings of sexual attractiveness, romantic attractiveness, and cuteness were all positively correlated across animal stimuli. Sexual attractiveness was strongly correlated with romantic attractiveness (r = .77, p < .001) and all others had medium correlations (r = .42-.46, p < .001) (see online supplemental materials Tables S1-S3).
Means and SDs for the scale items are reported in supplemental Table S4.
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Acknowledgements
Thank you to everyone who participated in this study. Thank you especially to the members and moderators of the Zooville community and to its chief administrator, ZTHorse, for their support of this research and feedback on the study. Thank you to Dr. Skye Stephens, Dr. Tracey Curwen, and Dr. Brandon Sparks for their expertise in the creation of this survey. ZTHorse, Zooville.org Administrator, can be contacted at foxyequine@protonmail.com
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This research was supported by a research award from The Centre for Forensic Behavioural Sciences and Justice Studies. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
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Zidenberg, A.M., Olver, M.E. Measurement and Correlates of Zoophilic Interest in an Online Community Sample. Arch Sex Behav 51, 4179–4193 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-022-02429-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-022-02429-x