Lisa M Diamond
Biographic Data
| ID | 83412 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Lisa M Diamond |
| GIVEN NAMES | Lisa M |
| FAMILY NAME | Diamond |
| SIGNATURE | DIAMOND L M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Utah |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9875-9589 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 63 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1093 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 62 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Mining the Gaps
Over the past several decades, scholars have conducted hundreds of studies investigating potential biomarkers of sexual orientation, such as genes, neuroanatomical features, and patterns of physiological response to sexual stimuli. The findings have been inconsistent: Biological measures sometimes converge with-but just as often diverge from-individuals' self-reported sexual attractions, behaviors, and identities. For example, numerous studies sh…
What Develops in the Biodevelopment of Sexual Orientation
Rethinking minority stress
Considering the role of reward sensitivity in the relationship between early adversity and sexual behaviour
Many individuals in the United States will experience some form of abuse or neglect before the age of 18. Exposure to such adversities earlier in life can predict greater sexual risk engagement such as high sexual partner number. While the research examining the influence of early adversity on sexual behaviour is vast, we have yet to fully understand why this association exists. In the present manuscript we attempt to shed light on potential pred…
Gender Disparities in the Real World
Our essay addresses the real-life difficulties of discussing and describing gender inequalities. We acknowledge that, at times, falling back on binary heuristics might be necessary to communicate findings, but that this needs to happen in the context of a both/and approach. We argue that quantitative social science can be inclusive, even if there are limits to what data can be analyzed in depth. We conclude that a deep engagement with the complex…
Understanding the Link Between Adolescent Same-Gender Contact and Unintended Pregnancy
Menstrual Cycle Changes in Daily Sexual Motivation and Behavior Among Sexually Diverse Cisgender Women
The Health Benefits of Sexual Expression
Objective: Sexual activity is a fundamental human function with short-term and long-term emotional, social, and physical benefits. Yet within healthcare, sexuality has been marginalized and many HCPs are unaware of its beneficial implications for immediate and long-term health. Methods: To challenge this assumption we combined the data that already had been collected by the authors with an extensive search of articles on the various health benefi…
Early childhood adversity and Women’s sexual behavior
The New Genetic Evidence on Same-Gender Sexuality
In September of 2019, the largest-ever (N = 477,522) genome-wide-association study of same-gender sexuality was published in Science . The primary finding was that multiple genes are significantly associated with ever engaging in same-gender sexual behavior, accounting for between 8-25% of variance in this outcome. Yet an additional finding of this study, which received less attention, has more potential to transform our current understanding of …
Gender Fluidity and Nonbinary Gender Identities Among Children and Adolescents
A growing number of children and adolescents report having gender identities or expressions that differ from their birth-assigned gender or from social and cultural gender norms. Some identify as transgender, whereas others consider themselves nonbinary or gender fluid. Nonbinary and gender fluid youth are distinct from transgender youth in that they typically report that their gender identity (i.e., their internal sense of gender) or their gende…
Women’s Cortisol Stress Responsivity, Sexual Arousability, and Sexual History
Racial/Ethnic Differences in Unwanted Births
ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to explore sexual orientation disparities in unwanted births by race/ethnicity.BackgroundPrevious research has documented that sexual minority women (SMW) are more likely to report unintended pregnancy than heterosexual women and that Black and Latina women are more likely to report unintended pregnancy than White women. No research has examined how pregnancy intention varies at the intersection of these t…
Parent responses to childhood gender nonconformity
Heterogeneity in Gender/Sex Sexualities
Sexuality research has generally privileged attractions based on partners' sexed physical bodies over attractions based on other features, including gender expression and personality traits. Gender may actually be quite central to sexual attractions. However, its role has received little empirical attention. To explore how gendered and sexed features, among others, are related to sexual attractions, the current study assessed how sexually diverse…
Stability of Sexual Attractions Across Different Timescales
Wanting Women
Female Homosexuality and Bisexuality
Sexual Fluidity in Male and Females
Sexual Orientation, Controversy, and Science
Ongoing political controversies around the world exemplify a long-standing and widespread preoccupation with the acceptability of homosexuality. Nonheterosexual people have seen dramatic surges both in their rights and in positive public opinion in many Western countries. In contrast, in much of Africa, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Oceania, and parts of Asia, homosexual behavior remains illegal and severely punishable, with some countries reta…
Three critical questions for future research on lesbian relationships
In this article I discuss three questions that should be priorities for future research on lesbian love and relationships. The first question concerns the very definition of "lesbian relationship," given how many women may be engaged in same-sex relationships without identifying as lesbian. The second question concerns the potential influence of childhood neglect and abuse on adult women's same-sex relationships, a topic that has important implic…
Scrutinizing Immutability
We review scientific research and legal authorities to argue that the immutability of sexual orientation should no longer be invoked as a foundation for the rights of individuals with same-sex attractions and relationships (i.e., sexual minorities). On the basis of scientific research as well as U.S. legal rulings regarding lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) rights, we make three claims: First, arguments based on the immutability of sexual orientat…
Polyamory, monoamory, and sexual fluidity
Does Stress-Related Growth Really Matter for Adolescents’ Day-to-Day Adaptive Functioning
Adolescent stress-related growth refers to enhancement in an adolescent’s cognitive-affective or social resources as a result of experiencing stressors. We tested whether adolescents reporting high levels of stress-related growth showed superior adaptation outcomes on a day-to-day basis. Participants ( n = 91; females = 46, age = 14) completed a questionnaire measure of stress-related growth and kept a diary of emotional and interpersonal functio…
APA Handbook of Sexuality and Psychology
Female bisexuality from adolescence to adulthood
Debates persist over whether bisexuality is a temporary stage of denial or transition, a stable "3rd type" of sexual orientation, or a heightened capacity for sexual fluidity. The present study uses 5 waves of longitudinal data collected from 79 lesbian, bisexual, and "unlabeled" women to evaluate these models. Both the "3rd orientation" and "fluidity" models had support, but the "transitional stage" model did not. Over 10 years, 2/3 of women cha…
Sexual identity, attractions, and behavior among young sexual-minority women over a 2-year period
Previous research suggests that the sexual identities, attractions, and behaviors of sexual-minority (i.e., nonheterosexual) women change over time, yet there have been few longitudinal studies addressing this question, and no longitudinal studies of sexual-minority youths. The results of 2-year follow-up interviews with 80 lesbian, bisexual, and "unlabeled" women who were first interviewed at 16-23 years of age are reported. Half of the particip…
Development of sexual orientation among adolescent and young adult women
Although some research suggests that sexual orientation is a stable, early appearing trait, interviews with 89 young sexual-minority women revealed that a majority of women failed to report at least one of the following: childhood indicators of sexual orientation, stability in same-sex attractions, or awareness of same-sex attractions prior to the conscious process of sexual questioning. Lesbians were not more likely to report these experiences t…
Sexual Identity Trajectories Among Sexual-Minority Youths
I’m Straight, but I Kissed a Girl’
Nearly 20 years ago, Kitzinger (1987) argued that the shift in psychological research in the 1970s and 1980s toward a liberal-humanistic view of lesbians and gay men as ‘just like’ heterosexuals (rather than intrinsically deviant and pathological) was not, in fact, as positive and progressive as it might have seemed. Rather, she noted that this conceptualization actually reinforced the dominant social order by presenting same-sex sexuality as a m…
Questioning Gender and Sexual Identity
A New View of Lesbian Subtypes
Research has increasingly documented that the distinction between lesbian and bisexual women is one of degree rather than kind, and some researchers have therefore argued for an end to sexual categorization altogether. To the contrary, I maintain that researchers should explore alternative criteria for sexual categorization that might allow us to discern novel and meaningful subtypes of same-sex sexuality Toward this end, I explore the usefulness…
Was it a phase? Young women's relinquishment of lesbian/bisexual identities over a 5-year period
There have been many anecdotal accounts of individuals who self-identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual only to relinquish these identities later. The current study examines this phenomenon among a sample of young nonheterosexual women who underwent 3 interviews over a 5-year period. Over a quarter of these women relinquished their lesbian/bisexual identities during this period: half reclaimed heterosexual identities and half gave up all identity l…
Sexual‐Minority and Heterosexual Youths' Peer Relationships
The current study compared the peer relationships and well‐being of 60 sexual‐minority (i.e., nonheterosexual) and 65 heterosexual youths between the ages of 15 and 23. Sexual‐minority youths had comparable self‐esteem, mastery, and perceived stress as did heterosexuals, but greater negative affect. Younger sexual‐minority male adolescents had smaller overall peer networks than did young male heterosexuals, whereas older male and female sexual mi…
Passionate Friendships Among Adolescent Sexual-Minority Women
Adolescent friendships containing the emotional intensity of romantic rela-tionships, yet lacking sexual activity, have been documented in numerous cultures and historical periods. This research explores these relationships among contemporary young sexual-minority women. Phone interviews with 80 lesbian, bisexual, and unlabeled women between 18 and 25 years of age (M = 21.8, SD = 2.1) assessed characteristics of their closest adolescent friend-sh…
Scrutinizing Immutability
We review scientific research and legal authorities to argue that the immutability of sexual orientation should no longer be invoked as a foundation for the rights of individuals with same-sex attractions and relationships (i.e., sexual minorities). On the basis of scientific research as well as U.S. legal rulings regarding lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) rights, we make three claims: First, arguments based on the immutability of sexual orientat…
Desegregating Sexuality Research
Scholarly investigations into male and female sexuality over the life course have long occupied two separate "camps": One focused on the biological aspects of sexuality and one focused on the sociocultural/political aspects. This bifurcated approach has been particularly ill suited for the study of sexual desire, a topic that has been generally undertheorized by sex researchers. A modern reappraisal of gender and sexual desire is proposed that ta…
Physiological evidence for repressive coping among avoidantly attached adults
Research suggests that the quality of childhood attachments to caregivers influences the development of capacities and strategies for emotion regulation. Avoidantly attached individuals are characterized by emotion-regulation strategies involving the suppression of negative thoughts and feelings. Psychophysiological research on repressive coping suggests that these strategies might be associated with patterns of heightened and escalating sympathe…
Explaining Diversityin the Development of Same‐Sex Sexuality Among Young Women
This article summarizes findings from two ongoing studies charting the development of 167 adolescent and young adult sexual‐minority women. Resultsdocument considerable variation in the quality, relative distribution, and context of women's same‐sex and other‐sex attractions. Furthermore, contrary to conventional wisdom, the timing of a woman's first same‐sex attractions is not systematically related to subsequent features of sexual identity deve…
Stability of Sexual Attractions Across Different Timescales
The Desire Disorder in Research on Sexual Orientation in Women
Attachment style, current relationship security, and negative emotions
Young men were subjected to laboratory inductions of anger and anxiety after undergoing a physiological assessment of vagal tone, an index of parasympathetic nervous system functioning that has been associated with emotion regulation in prior research. We tested whether: (i) young men's emotional reactivity and recovery were associated with their global attachment style or their perceptions of security in specific, current attachment relationship…
Having a Girlfriend Without Knowing It”
This article provides a qualitative analysis of the intimate friendships of 80 adolescent and young adult sexual-minority women who were interviewed as part of an ongoing longitudinal study. Many reported having participated in a same-sex best friendship that they considered as committed, intimate, passionate, and intense as a romantic relationship. These "passionate friendships" typically combined components of the normative heterosexual friends…
Every time you go away
This study investigated changes in day-to-day affect, behavior, and physiology (hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis activity) associated with temporary physical separations from romantic partners (such as those brought about by work-related travel). Daily diaries and measures of salivary cortisol were collected from 42 couples over a 21-day period that was timed to coincide with a naturally occurring 4- to 7-day separation. There were sign…
Sexual Minority Women’s Sexual Motivation Around the Time of Ovulation
Psychobiological research on attachment
Over the past decade, psychobiological research on adult attachment has increased dramatically. We review recent findings regarding associations between attachment style and patterns of reactivity in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical axis and the autonomic nervous system. The overall pattern of results suggests that both anxiety and avoidance are associated with heightened hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical and autonomic nervous system…
Individual differences in adolescents' sympathetic and parasympathetic functioning moderate associations between family environment and psychosocial adjustment
The present study tested whether individual differences in autonomic nervous system functioning interact with environmental risk factors to predict adolescents' psychosocial functioning. The authors assessed skin conductance and respiratory sinus arrhythmia at rest and during laboratory stressors in 110 14-year-olds. Subsequently, adolescents and their mothers provided both questionnaire and daily diary data (over 10 days) on emotional and interp…
The New Genetic Evidence on Same-Gender Sexuality
In September of 2019, the largest-ever (N = 477,522) genome-wide-association study of same-gender sexuality was published in Science . The primary finding was that multiple genes are significantly associated with ever engaging in same-gender sexual behavior, accounting for between 8-25% of variance in this outcome. Yet an additional finding of this study, which received less attention, has more potential to transform our current understanding of …
Parent responses to childhood gender nonconformity
Heterogeneity in Gender/Sex Sexualities
Sexuality research has generally privileged attractions based on partners' sexed physical bodies over attractions based on other features, including gender expression and personality traits. Gender may actually be quite central to sexual attractions. However, its role has received little empirical attention. To explore how gendered and sexed features, among others, are related to sexual attractions, the current study assessed how sexually diverse…
Development of sexual orientation among adolescent and young adult women
Although some research suggests that sexual orientation is a stable, early appearing trait, interviews with 89 young sexual-minority women revealed that a majority of women failed to report at least one of the following: childhood indicators of sexual orientation, stability in same-sex attractions, or awareness of same-sex attractions prior to the conscious process of sexual questioning. Lesbians were not more likely to report these experiences t…
Passionate Friendships Among Adolescent Sexual-Minority Women
Adolescent friendships containing the emotional intensity of romantic rela-tionships, yet lacking sexual activity, have been documented in numerous cultures and historical periods. This research explores these relationships among contemporary young sexual-minority women. Phone interviews with 80 lesbian, bisexual, and unlabeled women between 18 and 25 years of age (M = 21.8, SD = 2.1) assessed characteristics of their closest adolescent friend-sh…
Explaining Diversityin the Development of Same‐Sex Sexuality Among Young Women
This article summarizes findings from two ongoing studies charting the development of 167 adolescent and young adult sexual‐minority women. Resultsdocument considerable variation in the quality, relative distribution, and context of women's same‐sex and other‐sex attractions. Furthermore, contrary to conventional wisdom, the timing of a woman's first same‐sex attractions is not systematically related to subsequent features of sexual identity deve…
Sexual identity, attractions, and behavior among young sexual-minority women over a 2-year period
Previous research suggests that the sexual identities, attractions, and behaviors of sexual-minority (i.e., nonheterosexual) women change over time, yet there have been few longitudinal studies addressing this question, and no longitudinal studies of sexual-minority youths. The results of 2-year follow-up interviews with 80 lesbian, bisexual, and "unlabeled" women who were first interviewed at 16-23 years of age are reported. Half of the particip…
Sexual Identity Trajectories Among Sexual-Minority Youths
Desegregating Sexuality Research
Scholarly investigations into male and female sexuality over the life course have long occupied two separate "camps": One focused on the biological aspects of sexuality and one focused on the sociocultural/political aspects. This bifurcated approach has been particularly ill suited for the study of sexual desire, a topic that has been generally undertheorized by sex researchers. A modern reappraisal of gender and sexual desire is proposed that ta…
Having a Girlfriend Without Knowing It”
This article provides a qualitative analysis of the intimate friendships of 80 adolescent and young adult sexual-minority women who were interviewed as part of an ongoing longitudinal study. Many reported having participated in a same-sex best friendship that they considered as committed, intimate, passionate, and intense as a romantic relationship. These "passionate friendships" typically combined components of the normative heterosexual friends…
Friendship and Attachment Among Heterosexual and Sexual-Minority Youths
Emotion Regulation Across the Life Span
What does sexual orientation orient? A biobehavioral model distinguishing romantic love and sexual desire.
Although it is typically presumed that heterosexual individuals only fall in love with other-gender partners and gay-lesbian individuals only fall in love with same-gender partners, this is not always so. The author develops a biobehavioral model of love and desire to explain why. The model specifies that (a) the evolved processes underlying sexual desire and affectional bonding are functionally independent; (b) the processes underlying affection…
Was it a phase? Young women's relinquishment of lesbian/bisexual identities over a 5-year period
There have been many anecdotal accounts of individuals who self-identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual only to relinquish these identities later. The current study examines this phenomenon among a sample of young nonheterosexual women who underwent 3 interviews over a 5-year period. Over a quarter of these women relinquished their lesbian/bisexual identities during this period: half reclaimed heterosexual identities and half gave up all identity l…
Emerging Perspectives on Distinctions Between Romantic Love and Sexual Desire
Although sexual desire and romantic love are often experienced in concert, they are fundamentally distinct subjective experiences with distinct neurobiological substrates. The basis for these distinctions is the evolutionary origin of each type of experience. The processes underlying sexual desire evolved in the context of sexual mating, whereas the processes underlying romantic love—or pair bonding—originally evolved in the context of infant-car…
Sexual‐Minority and Heterosexual Youths' Peer Relationships
The current study compared the peer relationships and well‐being of 60 sexual‐minority (i.e., nonheterosexual) and 65 heterosexual youths between the ages of 15 and 23. Sexual‐minority youths had comparable self‐esteem, mastery, and perceived stress as did heterosexuals, but greater negative affect. Younger sexual‐minority male adolescents had smaller overall peer networks than did young male heterosexuals, whereas older male and female sexual mi…
Toward Greater Specificity in Modeling the Ecological Context of Desire
Commentaries| October 04 2005 Toward Greater Specificity in Modeling the Ecological Context of Desire Subject Area: Psychiatry and Psychology , Women's and Children's Health Lisa M. Diamond Lisa M. Diamond University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Human Development (2005) 48 (5): 291–297. https://doi.org/10.1159/000086873 Article history Published Online: October 04 200…
II. From the Heart or the Gut? Sexual-minority Women’s Experiences of Desire for Same-sex and Other-sex Partners
I’m Straight, but I Kissed a Girl’
Nearly 20 years ago, Kitzinger (1987) argued that the shift in psychological research in the 1970s and 1980s toward a liberal-humanistic view of lesbians and gay men as ‘just like’ heterosexuals (rather than intrinsically deviant and pathological) was not, in fact, as positive and progressive as it might have seemed. Rather, she noted that this conceptualization actually reinforced the dominant social order by presenting same-sex sexuality as a m…
A New View of Lesbian Subtypes
Research has increasingly documented that the distinction between lesbian and bisexual women is one of degree rather than kind, and some researchers have therefore argued for an end to sexual categorization altogether. To the contrary, I maintain that researchers should explore alternative criteria for sexual categorization that might allow us to discern novel and meaningful subtypes of same-sex sexuality Toward this end, I explore the usefulness…
Attachment style, current relationship security, and negative emotions
Young men were subjected to laboratory inductions of anger and anxiety after undergoing a physiological assessment of vagal tone, an index of parasympathetic nervous system functioning that has been associated with emotion regulation in prior research. We tested whether: (i) young men's emotional reactivity and recovery were associated with their global attachment style or their perceptions of security in specific, current attachment relationship…
Careful What You Ask For
Introduction
This chapter introduces and defines the notion of positive adolescent female sexuality and summarizes the diverse perspectives that each of the chapters in this volume takes regarding this topic
Physiological evidence for repressive coping among avoidantly attached adults
Research suggests that the quality of childhood attachments to caregivers influences the development of capacities and strategies for emotion regulation. Avoidantly attached individuals are characterized by emotion-regulation strategies involving the suppression of negative thoughts and feelings. Psychophysiological research on repressive coping suggests that these strategies might be associated with patterns of heightened and escalating sympathe…
Attachment style and two forms of affect coregulation between romantic partners
This study examined 2 forms of affect coregulation in 48 cohabiting heterosexual couples who provided daily ratings of positive and negative affect for 21 days. Coregulation was operationalized as covariation in partners’ daily levels of affect and coupling of the rates of change of partners’ affective cycles. Both forms of coregulation were detected, and both were moderated by attachment style. These results are interpreted with respect to the t…
How was your day? Couples’ affect when telling and hearing daily events
This study examined day‐to‐day mood changes associated with disclosure of positive and stressful events as affect regulation within couples. In daily diaries, 48 couples cohabiting in the United States reported whether they told their partner about the most positive and stressful event of their day. Participants reported greater positive affect on days when they told their partner about the most positive event of their day. This effect was less p…
Questioning Gender and Sexual Identity
Female bisexuality from adolescence to adulthood
Debates persist over whether bisexuality is a temporary stage of denial or transition, a stable "3rd type" of sexual orientation, or a heightened capacity for sexual fluidity. The present study uses 5 waves of longitudinal data collected from 79 lesbian, bisexual, and "unlabeled" women to evaluate these models. Both the "3rd orientation" and "fluidity" models had support, but the "transitional stage" model did not. Over 10 years, 2/3 of women cha…
Psychology (60 works) · Developmental psychology (51 works) · Social Psychology (42 works) · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy (32 works) · Gender Studies (30 works) · Sociology (29 works) · Human sexuality (27 works) · Clinical Psychology (21 works) · Sexual orientation (20 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (19 works)