The Effects of Death Reminders on Sex Differences in Prejudice Toward Gay Men and Lesbians

Abstract

Terror management research shows that death reminders (mortality salience) increase prejudice toward worldview violators. Two studies investigated whether death reminders exacerbated differences in heterosexual men's and women's reports of sexual prejudice (negative attitudes based on sexual orientation). Results showed that following death reminders, sex differences in anti-gay discrimination and affective prejudice toward gay men (but not toward lesbians) were larger, and that these increased sex differences were mediated by gender role beliefs. The current studies suggest that researchers may attenuate the effects of death reminders by lessening the perceived worldview violation in addition to alleviating the existential terror of death.

Keywords:

• terror management
• sexual prejudice
• mortality salience
• gender roles

Acknowledgments

Portions of this research were presented at the 2008 and 2009 meetings of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. The authors thank Bernie Whitley, Mark Barnett, Chris Barlett, Jessica McManus, Natalie Brown, Christa Smith, and two anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier versions of this article. Thanks are also extended to Lisa Duong, Kristin Noble, Eric Davis, Leschia McElhaney, and Margot Pickering for their help in data collection and entry.

Notes

1. There were no significant main effects or interactions for order of measures, thus, this variable was dropped from the primary analyses.

2. Given our theoretical framework, planned comparisons of men's and women's sexual prejudice scores in the mortality salience and control conditions provided the most powerful analytical test of our primary hypotheses. As recommended by previous researchers, planned comparisons were thus conducted without preliminary assessment of the omnibus F test (see Howell, 2002; Keppel & Zedeck, 1989; Rosenthal & Rosnow, 1991; Wilcox, 1987).

3. Gender role self-concept was not measured given that it is generally not a predictor of sexual prejudice (Whitley & Kite, 2006).

4. The gender role belief and empathy measures were introduced prior to rather than after the mortality salience or control essays because, first, we did not want to manipulate gender role belief or empathy scores (i.e., we wanted to assess whether unadulterated scores acted as successful mediators) and, second, because completing the gender role belief or empathy measures following the mortality salience manipulation might alone decrease unconscious death-thought accessibility and prevent any further exhibition of worldview defense on the sexual prejudice measures (see Arndt et al., 2004). Nonetheless, whether mortality salience affects men's and women's gender role belief scores is an important question for further research.

5. Gender role beliefs did not moderate the relationship between sex, mortality salience, and prejudice; that is, gender role beliefs did not interact with any of our other independent variables to predict sexual prejudice.

6. Gender role beliefs and empathy were moderately and negatively correlated (r = −.46, p = .001). Thus, although very much related, gender roles and empathy were not redundant constructs.