PSYC 3P34 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Kin Selection, Heterosexuality, Heteronormativity
13 Jan 2016
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Document Summary
The brain is plastic, shaped by acquired information. Limitation for studies: difficult to tell if differences are cause or effect. Handedness fetal right thumb sucker, right handed in life; fetal left thumb sucker, left handed in life. Decreased right handedness in lesbian and gay men (would only account for a small proportion of variance in sexual orientation) Spontaneous oto-acoustic emissions women produce more of these sounds than do men; shaped in early development. Differences in inner ear structures between lesbians and hetero women (# of soae are lower in lesbian/bisexual); associated loosely with sexual orientation but only in women. No consistent evidence of differences in circulating levels of sex hormones. Self identified straight men/women and homosexual men/women. Theory: what shapes our sexual orientation could be the process of sexual differentiation in the brain. Ex. increased left-handedness among cah women, increased reports of same-sex fantast in cah women. But no more likely to identify as lesbian than the general.
