The Psychology of Sexual Prejudice

Sexual prejudice refers to negative attitudes toward an individual because of her or his sexual orientation. In this article, it is used to characterize heterosexuals’ negative attitudes toward (a) homosexual behavior; (b) people with a homosexual or bisexual orientation; and (c) communities of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Sexual prejudice is a preferable term to homophobia because it conveys no assumptions about the motivations underlying negative attitudes, locates the study of attitudes concerning sexual orientation within the broader context of social psychological research on prejudice, and avoids value judgments about such attitudes. Sexual prejudice remains widespread in the United States, although moral condemnation has decreased in the 1990s and opposition to antigay discrimination has increased. The article reviews current knowledge about the prevalence of sexual prejudice, its psychological correlates, its underlying motivations, and its relationship to hate crimes and other antigay behaviors. In a six-month period beginning late in 1998, Americans were shocked by the brutal murders of Matthew Shepard and Billy Jack Gaither. Shepard, a 21-year old Wyoming college student, and Gaither, a 39-year old factory worker in Address correspondence to Gregory Herek, Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616-8775. Preparation of this paper was supported in part by an Independent Scientist Award from the National Institute of Mental Health (K02 MH01455). Alabama, had little in common except that each was targeted for attack because he was gay. Unfortunately, their slayings were not isolated events. Lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people — as well as heterosexuals perceived to be gay — routinely experience violence, discrimination, and personal rejection. A total of 1,102 hate crimes based on sexual orientation were tallied by law enforcement authorities in 1997. Because a substantial proportion of such crimes are never reported to police, that figure represents only the tip of an iceberg (Herek, Gillis, & Cogan, 1999). People with homosexual or bisexual orientations have long been stigmatized. With the rise of the gay political movement in the late 1960s, however, homosexuality’s condemnation as immoral, criminal, and sick came under increasing scrutiny. When the American Psychiatric Association dropped homosexuality as a psychiatric diagnosis in 1973, the question of why some heterosexuals harbor strongly negative attitudes toward homosexuals began to receive serious scientific consideration. Society’s rethinking of sexual orientation was crystallized in the term homophobia , which heterosexual psychologist George Weinberg coined in the late 1960s. The word first appeared in print in 1969 and was subsequently discussed at length in a popular book (Weinberg, 1972). Around the same time, heterosexism began to be used as a term analogous to sexism and racism, describing an ideological system that casts homosexuality as inferior to Although Weinberg coined the term homophobia, it was first used in print in 1969 by Jack Nichols and Lige Clarke in their May 23rd column in Screw magazine. Personal communications with George Weinberg (October 30, 1998) and Jack Nichols (November 5, 1998). Pr e-P ub lic ati on D raf t 2 heterosexuality. Although usage of the two words has not been uniform, homophobia has typically been employed to describe individual antigay attitudes and behaviors whereas heterosexism has referred to societal-level ideologies and patterns of institutionalized oppression of non-heterosexual people. By drawing popular and scientific attention to antigay hostility, the creation of these terms marked a watershed. Of the two, homophobia is probably more widely used and more often criticized. Its critics note that homophobia implicitly suggests that antigay attitudes are best understood as an irrational fear and that they represent a form of individual psychopathology rather than a socially reinforced prejudice. As antigay attitudes have become increasingly central to conservative political and religious ideologies since the 1980s, these limitations have become more problematic. Yet, heterosexism, with its historic macro-level focus on cultural ideologies rather than individual attitudes, is not a satisfactory replacement for homophobia. Thus, scientific analysis of the psychology of antigay attitudes will be facilitated by a new term. I offer sexual prejudice for this purpose. Broadly conceived, sexual prejudice refers to all negative attitudes based on sexual orientation, whether the target is homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual. Given the current social organization of sexuality, however, such prejudice is almost always directed at people who engage in homosexual behavior or label themselves gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Thus, as used here, sexual prejudice encompasses heterosexuals’ negative attitudes toward (a) homosexual behavior; (b) people with a homosexual or bisexual orientation; and (c) communities of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Like other types of prejudice, sexual prejudice Heterosexism was used as early as July 10, 1972, in two separate letters printed in the Great Speckled Bird, an alternative newspaper published in Atlanta, Georgia. I thank Joanne Despres of the Merriam Webster Company for her kind assistance with researching the origins of this word. has three principal features: It is an attitude (i.e., an evaluation or judgment); it is directed at a social group and its members; and it is negative, involving hostility or dislike. Conceptualizing heterosexuals’ negative attitudes toward homosexuality and bisexuality as sexual prejudice — rather than homophobia — has several advantages. First, sexual prejudice is a descriptive term. Unlike homophobia, it conveys no a priori assumptions about the origins, dynamics, and underlying motivations of antigay attitudes. Second, the term explicitly links the study of antigay hostility with the rich tradition of social psychological research on prejudice. Third, using the construct of sexual prejudice does not require value judgments that antigay attitudes are inherently irrational or evil.