"When I want to read a crappy paper in which a shonky methodology is applied to tendentious assumptions...

...and the results are inflated into an unsupported conclusion, I write one."

-- Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) explains why he doesn't subscribe to the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology.

Exhibit 1: In which screwed-up subjects turned out to describe their parents in unsympathetic terms. To puff the paper and boost their citations, two of the authors applied the results as a cudgel to homophobia in US politics. Hilarity ensued.
Executive summary: some of the subjects in this study were held to be in denial or lying about their sexuality (because their self-reported gay / straight status differed from the authors' assessment of their sexuality). The authors analysed their retrospective accounts of their parents, now accepting their reports as honest & reliable & free from the usual distortions in which we edit our memories to fit our personal narratives.

[Explaining Voice alert]

Now back in the 1950s there was a large, active branch of psychology looking at the Psychology of Fascism (on account of the recent Germany-related military activities), and in particular at the idea that the authoritarian parenting style supposedly favoured in Germany in the 1920s had made that generation more than usually vulnerable to obedience and inhumanity. Then Stan Milgram came along with his obedience studies and showed beyond a cavil or a doubt -- a Cavil is a unit of length used by the Romani bands of the British Isles -- that regardless of demographics and parenting style, 60% of any group of people are willing to torture a pleading victim to death if instructed to do so by a person in a white lab coat.

Will-o'-the-wisp: First album by Klaus Schultze

With a whole research program revealed as an ignus fatuus and a lot of people's career plans suddenly evaporating, the psychology profession reacted by thanking Milgram for saving them time and effort devising retrospective ethical standards that he had failed to meet, and nearly destroying his career. Fortunately there is no idea so bad that psychologists will abandon it completely, and the "authoritarian parenting style" notion is still around, with Exhibit 1 as part of its revival -- rebranded as "low parental autonomy support" for closeted subjects.

[/Explaining Voice alert]

To expose "implicit sexual identities" and expose some of the subjects as closet-dwellers -- not that there's anything wrong with that -- requires special stimuli, tailored to trigger anxiety and defense / denial mechanisms. Here they are:
At Riddled Research Laboratory and Special-Event Bakery we are totally behind the wider use of novelty wedding-cake toppers. Though people ordering a cake should specify on the form if they want an ordinary Bride / Groom topper rather than a novelty pair, and if they don't then STOP COMPLAINING. Anyway it only happened once. Some people CAN'T TAKE A JOKE.

Anyway, if you're using toppers to activate childhood traumas, it is crucial to remain aware of the many alternative cake-related anxieties, for these are potential confounding effects.

Cake AND Death!

There is a splendidly traumatic wedding-cake-destruction scene in the final episode of Man About the House (screened 1976), but can I find stills or a youtuber? CIBR. So much for your much-vaunted 'Interlattice'.


Belated Update:
You know what is really traumatic and triggering? LSD-laced wedding-cake decorations.

Ectoplasmic pup not included.