Foreskin restorers: insights into motivations, successes, challenges, and experiences with medical and mental health professionals - An abridged summary of key findings.

Demographically diverse surveys in the United States suggest that 5-10% of non-voluntarily circumcised American males wish that they had not been circumcised. Similar data are unavailable in other countries. An unknown proportion of circumcised males experience acute circumcision-related distress; some attempt to regain a sense of bodily integrity through non-surgical foreskin restoration.

False beliefs predict increased circumcision satisfaction in a sample of US American men.

Critics of non-therapeutic male and female childhood genital cutting claim that such cutting is harmful. It is therefore puzzling that 'circumcised' women and men do not typically regard themselves as having been harmed by the cutting, notwithstanding the loss of sensitive, prima facie valuable tissue. For female genital cutting (FGC), a commonly proposed solution to this puzzle is that women who had part(s) of their vulvae removed before sexual debut 'do not know what they are missing' and may 'justify' their genitally-altered state by adopting false beliefs about the benefits of FGC, while simultaneously stigmatising unmodified genitalia as unattractive or unclean.

Why get involved? Exploring gay and bisexual men's experience of the gay community.

Involvement in a gay community is a necessary step in the formation of a positive gay identity. However, how gay individuals think of a gay community and how they participate in these communities remains largely unexplored from a psychological perspective. The current study used an online survey containing several open-ended response items asking participants how they define the gay community, their first experience with it, and the advantages and disadvantages resulting from their involvement.

On the causal mechanisms of stereotype threat: can skills that don't rely heavily on working memory still be threatened?

Recent work suggests that stereotype threat (ST) harms performance by reducing available working memory capacity. Is this the only mechanism by which ST can occur? Three experiments examined ST's impact on expert golf putting, which is not harmed when working memory is reduced but is hurt when attention is allocated to proceduralized processes that normally run outside working memory. Experiment 1 showed that well learned golf putting is susceptible to ST.

Implicit and explicit measures of sexual orientation attitudes: in group preferences and related behaviors and beliefs among gay and straight men.

The relations among implicit and explicit measures of sexual orientation attitudes and sexual-orientation-related behavior and beliefs among gay men (Study 1) and straight men (Studies 1 and 2) were explored. Study 1 found relations between implicit and explicit measures of sexual orientation attitudes, large differences between gay and straight men on both implicit and explicit measures, and that these measures predicted sexual-orientation-related behaviors among gay men. Also, only straight men exhibited a negative relation between their attitudes toward homosexuality and heterosexuality.

The mediating effects of attitudes toward homosexuality between secure attachment and disclosure outcomes among gay men.

Past research has found that a stronger secure attachment style, developed in childhood, enhances one's ability to acknowledge negative feelings, cope with negative life events, and develop satisfying social relationships. Because an integral part of the "coming out" process for gay men is the ability to seek support from the gay community in order to reevaluate negative beliefs toward homosexuality, a gay man's attachment style may strongly impact this critical stage of his life. Results demonstrated that men who more strongly endorsed a secure attachment style reported more positive attitudes toward their own homosexuality, and that these more positive attitudes could mediate the relation between more secure attachment style, greater levels of self-disclosure regarding their homosexuality, and greater self-esteem.