Summary

     The major purpose of this chapter has been to present an easily
understandable discussion (1) of respondent characteristics, and (2) of
the methods that were employed for obtaining the research information.
Academic readers might feel that the discussion presented here is too
brief. However, this book was written primarily with the lay reader in
mind. Love-shyness is a very serious, painful problem that requires a
much better understanding than presently prevails in our society. I believe
that a widespread dissemination of knowledge regarding this problem
is very necessary. There is no way love-shyness can be effectively reme-
died and prevented without such a dissemination of research knowl-
edge. Moreover, people must be able to properly understand knowledge
in order to be able to make any kind of constructive use of it.
      Three different groups of men were studied for this research. Sim-
ply put, there were two love-shy groups and one comparison group that
was composed of 200 non-shy individuals. The 200 non-shys were all
university men between the ages of 19 and 24. Similarly, one of the love-
shy groups was composed of 200 university men who were between the
ages of 19 and 24. The second love-shy group was composed of 100 men
in the 35 to 50 year age category. The cooperation of all three groups
was obtained primarily through the aid of posted bulletin board
announcements. The two 19 to 24 year old groups were both drawn
primarily from seven different universities. The 100 older love-shy men
were drawn entirely from the New York and Los Angeles greater met-
ropolitan areas.
      Seven criteria were used for this study in determining who is and
who is not "love-shy". Briefly, all respondents in both love-shy groups
possessed each and every one of these seven characteristics: (1) all were
male; (2) all were strictly heterosexual; (3) all were virginal; (4) all very
strongly desired a romantically intimate relationship with a woman;
(5) all very rarely or never dated; (6) all lacked a personal history that
incorporated any meaningful romantic and/or sexual relationships with
women; and (7) all suffered strong anxiety pains at the mere thought of
making an assertive move towards the initiation of a relationship with
a woman.
      Finally, this chapter presented a discussion on how heterosexuals
could be accurately distinguished from homosexuals. This is an impor-
tant issue because love-shy heterosexuals are often misperceived and
publicly mislabeled "homosexual" as a result of their never being observed
interacting informally with women. New diagnostic categories such as
(1) the closet heterosexual, and (2) the male lesbian, were also introduced.
And their key relevancy to love-shyness among heterosexual males was
explained and discussed. Attention was also accorded such issues as
(1) why this investigation was designed to study males only, and (2) why
love-shyness was studied rather than other kinds of shyness.
      NOTE: In Appendix III of this book the reader will find a table
which summarizes the mean Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ) scores
for the non-shy and the love-shy samples.