The Kinsey team did not include the interviews they conducted with African Americans because the team believed its sample was not large enough. His subjects were often members of particular institutions he visited, such as prisons, schools, or workplaces. Both Kinsey reports were based upon extensive sex histories conducted with almost twelve thousand white women and men. His pioneering research played a significant role in the transition from religious to scientific authority over matters of sexuality in the United States.ĭespite its shortcomings, Kinsey's research represented a significant departure from earlier sex research, particularly that of the case study method of psychoanalysis.

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) gave the postwar nation a glimpse into American sexual lives while also underscoring the chasm between sexual norms and actual behavior. Kinsey and his associates at the Institute for Sex Research at Indiana University (later named the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction) are best known for the two volumes popularly dubbed the Kinsey Reports. He became an assistant professor of zoology at Indiana University in 1920, where for twenty years he specialized in research on the gall wasp. Kinsey was a graduate of Bowdoin College and the Bussey Institute at Harvard. Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, Kinsey later married Clara Bracken McMillen they had four children, one of whom died just before his fifth birthday. 25 August 1956), biologist, sex researcher.Īlfred Kinsey ranks as one of the most influential sex researchers (sexologists) of the twentieth century.

Alfred kinsey zoologist