Correlates of Attitudes Toward Bisexuality: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a systematic review of factors that correlate with attitudes toward bisexuals, and a meta-analysis to estimate the effect size of these relationships. A search strategy was designed to identify studies that had a measure of attitudes toward bisexuals and assessed the relationship between these attitudes and at least one attitude-relevant correlate. The strategy was then applied to PsycINFO, PsycEXTRA, Proquest Psychology Collection, EBSCO Psychology and Behavioral Sciences Collection and SociINDEX databases, and calls for unpublished data were circulated through relevant professional bodies. Effect size data were extracted from the articles, and meta-analyses were conducted on each of the applicable correlates. The meta-analyses revealed that age, contact (quality and quantity), income, political orientation, religion, sexual orientation, education, ethnicity, gender, and population density were related to negative attitudes toward bisexual individuals (Fisher’s Zs = 0.108, −0.418, −0.209, 0.221, 0.231, 0.346, & 0.831, and Hedges’ g’s = 0.365, 0.344, 0.278, & 0.193, respectively). In addition, a sub-group moderation analysis revealed these effect sizes for participant gender differed as a function of target gender (i.e., bisexual men vs. bisexual women).

KEYWORDS:

• Attitudes
• bisexuality
• bisexual
• sexual prejudice
• bi-prejudice
• biphobia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2022.2112524

Notes

1. It is worth noting the range of other non-monosexual identities apart from bisexual identities—including those that are attracted to all genders or who are attracted to other people regardless of their gender (e.g., pansexual, omnisexual, and polysexual individuals or individuals with a range of other sexual or romantic identities).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.