When “They” Become “Us”: The Effect of Time and Ingroup Identity on Perceptions of Gay and Lesbian Group Members

ABSTRACT

Prejudice change manipulations rarely produce the expected attitude change effects. Our research suggests that attitude change depends on time-dependent memory consolidation processes. This study tested the effects of group information and time on perceptions of gays and lesbians. Heterosexual participants (N = 90) were randomly assigned to a condition where their ingroup, or an outgroup, included gay and lesbian individuals. We measured participants’ gay and lesbian political attitudes and evaluations of the groups’ members at a short or long delay. Results showed no effect of our manipulations on political attitudes, F(1, 86) = 0.14, p = .72. Contrary to predictions, participants evaluated gay and lesbian ingroup members less positively at the long versus short delay, t(49) = 3.72, p = .0004, d = 1.01. Results suggest that members of stigmatized groups are perceived more negatively when associated with one’s ingroup.

KEYWORDS:

• Memory consolidation
• group perception
• gay and lesbian attitudes
• attitude change
• prejudice reduction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. One participant was removed for napping in the short-delay condition, one was removed for not sleeping on the first night in the long-delay condition, one was removed for reporting that they personally knew at least one of the targets, and one was removed for failing to correctly remember their group membership at the long delay. Seven participants were removed for failing to carefully attend to the learning materials (e.g., were texting) or for careless responding (e.g., used a response set or were outliers). One participant was removed because they were under 18 years old.