Can One "Catch" Sexual Orientation? Social Contagion, Concealability, and Adolescent Non-heterosexuality

• In Event: 308 - Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 06. Non-heterosexuality: Session I

Abstract

In recent years, political advocacy campaigns have popularized (and in some cases, institutionalized) the idea that sexual orientation is immutable and biological. However, sociological studies have suggested that social networks may play a role in the distribution of conditions that feature intersecting behavioral and psychological components, such as suicidality (Abrutyn & Mueller 2014) and autism (Liu, King & Bearman 2010). Although sexual orientation also features a combination of behavioral and psychological components, the idea that certain components of sexual orientation may be “spread” in social networks is controversial and often laden with politically charged connotations. This study attempts to overcome this gap in the social scientific understanding of non-heterosexual populations, and highlights the role that concealability plays in social contagion. Using three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, I evaluate a difference between the likelihood that individual adolescents will develop non-heterosexual responses over time if they have friends or siblings who report same-sex romantic or sexual relationships, compared to those with less network proximity to respondents who report non-heterosexual orientation. Building off a replication and extension of Abrutyn and Mueller’s work, I adjust the sample selection filters and controls used in the original study to focus on analyzing responses indicating non-heterosexuality attraction, behavior, and/or identity. From there, I apply the survey logistic procedure that they employ in their study to enable comparison between the results they arrive at for suicidality with the diffusion patterns that result from a model adjusted to measure indicators of non-heterosexuality.

Author

• Danya Raquel Lagos, University of Chicago