Other possibilities include various social-environmental explanations for homosexual-heterosexual differences in personality. This “essentialist” position holds that there are some innate personality differences between men and women and also between heterosexual and homosexual individuals, and the underlying factors that cause these two kinds of differences overlap. Why are there on-average homosexual-heterosexual differences in personality?įurthermore, why do these differences tend to mirror gender differences in personality? One possibility is that there are biological factors (e.g., prenatal exposure to sex hormones) that cause both gender differences and sexual orientation differences in personality. Thus, lesbians seemed to openly acknowledge and embrace their masculinity more than gay men acknowledged and embraced their femininity. Furthermore, lesbians rated themselves to be considerably more masculine and less feminine than straight women did. The effect size for this difference implies that 93% of lesbian women had interests that were more masculine than the average straight woman’s. Lesbian women had much more masculine occupational and hobby preferences than heterosexual women did. The really big lesbian-straight female differences were for M-F of interests and self-ascribed M-F. Anyway, moving along, the study also finds:Īs was true for the corresponding results for men, lesbian-straight female differences mirrored male-female differences-that is, traits that lesbians scored higher on than straight women were also traits that men scored higher on than women, and vice versa. That surely seems to contradict a prevailing stereotype (usually pushed by religious conservatives ) that paints gay women as emotionally disturbed. Lesbian women were somewhat higher on openness and instrumentality than straight women were, and they were somewhat lower on neuroticism. A highlight of some of the major findings: An interesting study by Professor Richard Lippa of California State University examines the correlation of certain personality traits to both gender and sexuality.