Gay men’s implicit attitudes towards sexual orientation: Disentangling the role of sociocultural influences and social identification

Abstract

The present research sought to distinguish the role of sociocultural negativity and social identification underlying gay men’s implicit attitudes towards sexual orientation. Fifty gay men completed two Implicit Association Tests. In both cases, the task required categorising, as quickly as possible, pictures of gay vs. straight couples, but these stimuli were either classified using normative categorical labels (homosexual vs. heterosexual couples) or in terms of their self-relevance (similar vs. dissimilar to me). Participants also completed the Reactions to Homosexuality Scale and the Outness Inventory. As expected, the pro-gay attitude was more pronounced when implicit attitudes were assessed in terms of self-relevance than based on normative categorical labels. In addition, these two facets of implicit attitudes overlapped more strongly among gay men who were less inclined to publicly affirm their sexual identity than among individuals who strongly identified publicly with being gay. The present findings extend our understanding of the sources and functions of implicit attitudes among members of a sexual minority group.

Keywords:

• implicit attitude
• sexual orientation
• internalised homonegativity
• ingroup favouritism
• gay men

Notes

1. We predicted that the two IATs should overlap for conceptual reasons (Hypothesis 2), but it could be argued that the significant correlation obtained reflects method-specific variance. Indeed, reliable correlations among conceptually distinct IATs have been documented (e.g. McFarland & Crouch, 2002; Mierke & Klauer, 2003). However, the scoring procedure used in the present case (Greenwald et al., 2003) has been shown to strongly reduce the role of method-specific variance (Back, Schmukle, Egloff, & Gutenberg, 2005; Mierke & Klauer, 2003).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kyle Jones

Kyle Jones is a doctoral student in clinical psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his M.A. in social psychology from San Diego State University. His primary research interests are in the development of behavioural interventions to address health disparities among the ethnic minority LGBT community.

Thierry Devos

Thierry Devos is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at San Diego State University. He received his Ph.D. in social sciences from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. His research examines how self and identity operate outside of conscious control and awareness. He has published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles or contributions to edited volumes. His research has been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.