Alan P. Bell -- led 1981 Kinsey study on homosexualityDennis McLellan, Los Angeles Times
Alan P. Bell, a research psychologist who led a groundbreaking Kinsey Institute study two decades ago suggesting that homosexuality has a biological basis, has died at the age of 70.
Mr. Bell died of a stroke May 13 in a hospital in Bloomington, Ind.
A retired professor of counseling and educational psychology at Indiana University in Bloomington, Mr. Bell was a senior research psychologist for 14 years at the Alfred C. Kinsey Institute for Sex Research.
Mr. Bell led the Kinsey Institute study, published in 1981, that suggested that homosexuals are born with that predisposition and not influenced by traumatic experiences during childhood development.
"We found homosexuality is deep-seated and not something that one chooses to be or not to be," Mr. Bell said at the time. "We looked at the biological underpinnings of sexuality."
Critics, however, questioned the study's controversial finding that there is almost no correlation between early family experience and adult sexual preference, and the researchers' method of relying on participants' memories in answering researchers' questions.
"I expect to be condemned from both sides -- by the radicals for even looking into the subject and by the analysts, who may say we're trying to paint a glowing picture of homosexuality," Mr. Bell said. "But we are reporting what people say, and it's all very consistent."
Paul Robinson, writing in Psychology Today, said Mr. Bell and his co- authors answer the question of why some people become homosexuals and others become heterosexuals "more
satisfactorily than any previous study."
Born in Newark, N.J., in 1932, Mr. Bell was awarded a bachelor's degree in philosophy from the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., in 1952. He received a master's degree from General Theological Seminary in New York in 1955, and as an Episcopal minister helped found a parish in Denville, N.J.
Mr. Bell obtained a doctoral degree in counseling from Columbia University in New York in 1964. During his doctoral internship at the Veterans Administration hospital in Northport, N.Y., he became interested in the dreams of a sex offender with whom he did extensive work. The result was the book "The Personality of a Child Molester," co-written with Calvin Hall.
In 1967, Mr. Bell became an assistant professor at Indiana
University and senior research psychologist at the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, which is affiliated with the university. He also served as a vice president of the institute for 12 years.
In 1970, Mr. Bell co-founded the university's Center for Human Growth, which serves as a departmental training site for graduate students in counseling and offers counseling for campus and community clients.
Mr. Bell was the author of several books, including "Human
Sexuality: Studies From the Kinsey Institute" and "The Mind and Heart in Human Sexual Behavior."
