Gay Men’s Implicit Attitudes towards Sexual Orientation: Disentangling the Role of Socio-Cultural Influences and Social Identification

The present research sought to distinguish the role of socio-cultural 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 categorizing, as quickly as possible, pictures of gay vs. straight couples, but these stimuli were either classified using normative categorical labels (homosexual vs. heterosexual couple) 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.