On Old-Fashioned Versus Modern Homonegativity Distinction: Evidence From Poland

ABSTRACT

Psychological research on prejudice against homosexuals distinguishes between old-fashioned (traditional) and modern (contemporary) homonegativity, which differ with regard to their content, correlates, and consequences. The current research offers evidence for the validity of old-fashioned versus modern homonegativity distinction in the post-communist, East European context. In Studies 1 and 2 (Ns = 295 and 327, respectively) the Polish adaptations of the non-gendered and gendered Homonegativity Scale (Morrison, Parriag, & Morrison, 1999) and the Modern Homonegativity Scale (Morrison & Morrison, 2003) were developed. Furthermore, divergent (discriminant) validity of traditional and contemporary anti-homosexual prejudice was demonstrated. Old-fashioned and modern homonegativity exhibited differential relationships with social distance and support for same-sex couples’ relational rights.

KEYWORDS:

• Homonegativity
• modern prejudice
• old-fashioned prejudice
• Poland
• same-sex marriage
• scale adaptation
• sexual prejudice
• social distance

Funding

The research was supported from DSM 1090/2014 grant awarded to the first author by the Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw.

Notes

^1. Polish translation of the Homonegativity Scale was prepared on the basis of the refined measure published by Morrison and Morrison (2003). Thus, instead of “Homosexuality is not a mental disorder” (Morrison et al., 1999, p. 126), item HS1 reads “Just because a person is homosexual does not mean that he or she has a mental disorder.”

^2. Throughout this contribution we report the unstandardized regression coefficients.

^3. Because the content of item HS6 (“Homosexuals should be avoided whenever possible”) is close to the meaning of social distance as a psychological construct, an objection could be raised that the correlation between traditional homonegativity and social distance reflects mere tautology. However, when the purged version of HS was used, the results pattern hardly changed.

^4. Items MHS3 (“Homosexuals do not have all the rights they need”) and MHS7 (“Homosexuals still need to protest for equal rights”) seemed to concern the same issues as criterion variables. Thus the high predictive value of modern homonegativity could be just an artifact caused by MHS and dependent variable content overlap. Nevertheless, even when a restricted 9-item version of MHS was used, no change in the results pattern was observed.

Additional information

Funding

The research was supported from DSM 1090/2014 grant awarded to the first author by the Faculty of Psychology, University of Warsaw.