Toying With Theoretical Models - Part III: What Evidence Must Be Addressed

This is part III of a series of essays:

Part I Motivations

Part II Obvious Problems

Part III What Evidence Must Be Addressed

Part IV Towards A Layered View

Part V Beauty and the Beast

Part VI The Critical Thoughts


In the previous two discussions, I have tackled my motivations for writing this series, and described some of the legitimate (if trivially obvious) issues that complicate the discussion of human behaviour and its analysis.

In this essay, I will take a few bytes of space to talk about the evidence and interpretation issues that have to be considered when the discussion turns towards human sexual behaviour.

Conflicting Evidence:

- Mutability of sexual orientation. This is a key point in the discussion, especially when the Christian Religious side of the conversation weighs in. While the public documentation that APA seems "absolute", with statements like The reality is that homosexuality is not an illness. It does not require treatment and is not changeable.. Meanwhile, at NARTH, we find the following The right to seek therapy to change one's sexual adaptation should be considered self-evident and inalienable. which clearly suggests a belief that sexual orientation is mutable.

- Validity of Experience. Any model of human behaviour must be able to reasonably express the described experiences of all of the participants. So, while on one side of the coin, we have the experience of many heterosexual and homosexual people that find it impossible - or at least inconceivable - that they might change their orientation, we also have the ex-gays that claim that they have made precisely such a change. Any model which promotes one view at the expense of invalidating someone else's life experience is suspect.

- Fluidity of behaviour. There are those whose behaviour is highly fluid across the range of human sexual behaviours. This covers a lot more than merely gender related attraction, but other factors that come into play such as age. There are young people who are sexually uninterested, and seniors who live active sex lives - and it seems that everyone has their "mate" somewhere out there. Similarly, the reported failure rates for reparative therapy techniques suggest that human behaviour doesn't necessarily change, regardless of the motivations of the patient.

- Persistence of Behaviour. Regardless of the morality of sexual behaviour, we must recognize its relative persistence. Consider the furor over the release of a sex offender from prison. Of all the people that we incarcerate, these individuals uniquely hold the record for this highest rates of recidivism. Along with the long history of repression that homosexuals have experienced in law and society, I think this is an important point to recognize. Even offenders like Toft who have willingly participated in therapeutic programs aimed at helping him manage those aspects of his sexuality that are dangerous to others are considered a high risk to reoffend. This suggests that the behaviours involved are much more persistent than conscious choices might suggest.

Limitations of Evidence:

- Psychological data is very difficult to quantify. Analysis must include the personal bias of the individuals interviewed, as well as the bias of the persons gathering the data. Cultural bias may also be a factor in the data gathering process, with questionnaires being particularly prone to "researcher bias". (for example, the MMPI has been criticized for precisely such issues, resulting in rework of the questions over time.

- Methodological errors or conflicts. Reparative Therapy has been heavily criticized for sampling bias as well as participant selection criteria, and similarly, Kinsey's results have been criticized by the conservative community because of where he drew his study population from, among other issues. The validity of these criticisms is a topic in its own right, but one that I will mostly try to leave at the door in this series.

- Ambiguity. There are significant unknowns in any study of human behaviour. In particular the roots and origins of any particular behaviour are seldom clear. At best, we might be able to formulate probable causes in individual cases.