Date of Award

2020

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Heterosexism and other forms of prejudice against the LGBTQ community remain prevalent across the world. Thus, the study of how to reduce heterosexism has become a much more common and necessary domain of research in recent years. Previous research has demonstrated mixed results of the effect of imagined intergroup contact on heterosexism. the current study sought to evaluate various contexts in which imagined intergroup contact would decrease or increase levels of both implicit and explicit heterosexist attitudes. I predicted that individuals who imagined winning a basketball game with a gay teammate would display more positive attitudes toward gay men whereas individuals who imagined losing a basketball game with a gay teammate would display more negative attitudes toward gay men. I further predicted that these effects would be stronger when the teammate was of higher (the team captain), rather than equal (a teammate), status. I found that there were no significant main effects nor interaction effects for the explicit attitude and behavior measures. However, there was a significant group contact by leadership status interaction when analyzing the implicit attitudes of participants. Participants who had a gay team captain associated €œGay People€ with €œBad€ less strongly than participants who had a straight team captain. This may have important implications for the representation of the LGBTQ community within leadership positions.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

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