You know how raging homophobes always look and seem a little, well, crazy? That’s because they are. At least according to a new study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Related: Journey To The Center Of The Inside Of The Bigot’s Brain
Researchers at the University of Rome Tor Vergata in Italy claim to have found a “remarkable association between dysfunctional aspects of personality and homophobic attitudes.” They asked over 500 college students ages 18 to 30 to complete a series of psychometric evaluations in an effort to assess their levels of homophobia, psychopathologic symptoms, defense mechanisms and attachment styles.
What they discovered was that students who scored highly on the psychoticism tests also tended to be more homophobic, “demonstrating that pathologic personality traits are involved in homophobic attitudes.”
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Psychoticism is a psychological trait often found in severe mental conditions that can contribute to heightened states of anger and hostility.
“Our study follows a controversial issue regarding homophobia as a possible mental disorder,” researchers concluded. “After discussing for centuries if homosexuality is to be considered a disease, for the first time we demonstrated that the real disease to be cured is homophobia, associated with potentially severe psychopathologies.”
Related: Here’s What Homophobia Sounds Like To “Normal” People
Glücklich
In other news, water is wet.
AtticusBennett
well DUH. a link between ignorance, bigotry, hatred and having a tenuous (at BEST!) grasp on reality? no s**T!
ever notice how it’s always the scum of society that are homophobic? exactly.
philistines, too.
the Philistine not only ignores all conditions of life which are not his own, but also demands that the rest of mankind should fashion its mode of existence after his own.
David Quirk
rather unnecessary
jwtraveler
Individual delusion is called mental illness. Mass delusion is called religion.
Gothrykke
Psychopathic tendencies in those who pick on the weak and outside the accepted norm? Heavens forfend!
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
The study fails to mention the root cause of said actions is being a deeply closeted self hating Gay……………..
Art G Ramirez
Super unnecessary. As if mental illness wasn’t stigmatized enough.
itzallan
No surprise there. Being gay gave us a more enlighten perspective on the matter. Ironic that everyone used to take it for granted that homosexuality was the illness instead of homophobia. Glad to see there are studies to expose the real sickness. The interesting thing is that as gays became more accepted, homophobia in people with psychopathy gets worse as they feed the illness.
Kangol
Homophobia linked to psychosis, who’d have thought it possible? What about r@cism?
Captain Obvious
I found a link between people who like cheese and people who commit mass murder.
Do people really take this stupid crap seriously? A bigot is a bigot because they were taught bigotry. They’re not crazy, they just don’t explore beyond what they’ve been taught.
You cure them with the experience of knowing people in that situation. Not by hurling insults and not by ostracizing them.
Slavery ended because over time relationships started forming and it was getting harder to pretend that human beings were animals. Civil rights came about the same way. Gay marriage passed the same way. Bigotry will finally end the same way.
What the “gay community” needs to do is get our heads out of our rears and stop hiding as well as stop discriminating by color from within. No more separate prides, no more hiding in gay ghettos, no more “masculine only”, and no more being ashamed of who you are. Until then expect nothing to change in the states where we have very little presence because we run away in droves to tiny little ghettos. I moved back to my bigoted little state and I no longer hide in fear because I have nothing to be ashamed of.
BlueDude
Gosh, this sounds like using big words for what we (the qu33rs) already knew.
@AtticusBennett: Love you, Atticus. I thought “philistine” was merely a pejorative, not an actual condition, such as “cretin”.
Chris
College students are called the human rats of psychology because of how much they are used in these studies. And as Captain Obvious notes, there is something suspect about all these correlational studies in the first place. When I was much younger, gay folk had all sorts of anti-social characteristics attached to them, too; to say nothing of poor folk, black folk and Latin@s.
What is more, mental illness is already a highly stigmatized condition. Do we really need more studies that pile it on?
So while this study makes us feel good about our net being like “them,” let’s not forget that we can make greater strides by engaging people unlike us in some pro-social stuff in the first place.
Octavio Roca
Psychosis maybe?
Mercurical Memo
@PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS: No. I don’t want these people on my team. I’ll take them as psychopaths but not closet cases. They are their own team.
vingtsunguy
I worked as a mental health professional for many years, and I oppose categorizing homophobia as a type of mental disorder. Ignorance is not a mental health issue. Making it so removes one’s personal responsibility.
Louis
This has always been true as well as obvious about these loony bastards.
Giancarlo85
@Captain Obvious: Captain doofus is back at it with more rambling nonsense. You didn’t actually refute anything. And you can’t change most of these nutcases as they are stuck in their ways.
Giancarlo85
@Captain Obvious: By the way stop telling us to move to homophobic shithole republican states. That is just stupid. You said that idiocy before. All the good jobs are in cities in blue states. There is no reason for me to move to some hick town.
Zekester
@Captain Obvious: I don’t think you or vingtsunguy have bothered to read the study. It didn’t say psychopathy causes homophobia. It said that there is a LINK between psychopathy and homophobia and that there is a “remarkable association between dysfunctional aspects of personality and homophobic attitudes.”
Nothing that you said is in contradiction to that. This isn’t about making excuses for homophobia or writing it off as a mental disorder. This is about discovering the common mental processes of people to better understand how to address them and to treat them.
As a mental health professional myself, I understand that these types of studies are critically important in helping us better understand and treat (clinically, socially and culturally) all forms of bigotry.
Giancarlo85
I think they should do more research on the possible links of conservatism and dementia. One former US President became a conservative but at the same time suffered from dementia and Alzheimers. I believe our resident troll, Alistair, has dementia too. There could be a possible link.
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NateOcean
I’d like to see the correllation not just between psychoticism and homophobia, but also with repressed homosexuality.