Out of the Closet: When Moral Identity and Protestant Work Ethic Improve Attitudes toward Advertising Featuring Same-Sex Couples

Abstract

This research examines how heterosexual consumers react to advertising featuring same-sex couples. Across three studies, we find that heterosexual consumers report higher levels of disgust in response to advertising featuring same-sex couples in comparison to mixed-sex couples, which results in more negative attitudes toward the advertisement and the advertised brand. We also find that moral-identity priming reduces disgust elicited by advertising featuring same-sex couples and improves attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand. However, we find that moral-identity priming is ineffective for consumers with high social dominance orientation. For these consumers, portraying same-sex couples as possessing Protestant work ethic traits decreases disgust and improves attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks go to James W. Frank for his help creating the stimuli and to Hamed Aghakhani for his help with the data analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This project was supported by funding from the F. Ross Johnson Professorship in Marketing and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Insight Grant awarded to the second author.