ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines whether the change in attitudes he referenced was affected by the 'argument from immutability', and the sense that social psychologists made of this question. He discusses the promises that both immutability and flexibility have held in psychology's engagement with public about sexuality in recent decades. He argues the critical potential of experimental social psychology is underestimated by seeing science only as a means of strategically presenting pre-formed arguments, and that the revolutionary nature of social constructionist scholarship can sometimes be overstated. He then develops these arguments by examining what positivist-empiricist social psychology can say about the need for the argument from immutability in changing public opinion. He attempts to move beyond nature/nurture thinking by focusing on both changes in attitudes and beliefs over time and sense that psychologists made of them. Finally, he concludes with some thoughts about how the denaturalization of sexuality in the twenty-first century might also be thought of as historical.
