How would you react? : exploring heterosexual women's reactions to confrontations of their own homonegative behaviour

Abstract

To date, little research has explored the utility of inter-personal confrontation as a strategy for the reduction of homonegative attitudes and/or behaviours among heterosexual women. Consequently, the purpose of the current study was to explore three unique aspects of such confrontations among a sample of heterosexual women from the University of Saskatchewan. These three aspects were: 1) to what extent do high- and low-prejudiced women’s reactions to confrontations of subtle homonegative behaviour differ; 2) what differences exist in the way that heterosexual women respond to bias directed towards gay men than to bias directed towards lesbian women; 3) what effect does the vested interest of a confronter have on heterosexual women’s reaction to confrontations of homonegative behaviour. A 2(target condition) X 2(modern homonegativity endorsement) X 4(confronter type) between-subjects design was used wherein 286 female volunteers completed a questionnaire booklet developed for the project. The questionnaire booklet asked participants to first imagine themselves in a scenario where they would be confronted for engaging in subtle homonegative behaviour and to then indicated how they would think, feel, and behave in response to such a confrontation. The results indicated that low-prejudice participants reacted with greater negative-self directed affect (e.g., guilt) and compunction (e.g., apologize for behaviour) than high-prejudice participants when confronted by either a gay man or lesbian woman. Such reactions are important as they mark the initiation of a self-regulatory cycle that allows the individual to avoid such biased behaviour in the future. Limitations of the study and directions for future research concerning inter-personal confrontations of homonegativity are also presented.