Fragile Heterosexuality

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Previous research demonstrates that membership of majority groups is often perceived as more fragile than membership of minority groups. Four studies (N1 = 90, N2 = 247, N3 = 500, N4 = 1,176) investigated whether this was the case for heterosexual identity, relative to gay identity. Support for fragile heterosexuality was found using various methods: sexual orientation perceptions of a target who engaged in incongruent behavior, free-responses concerning behaviors required to change someone's mind about a target's sexual orientation, agreement with statements about men/women's sexual orientation, and agreement with gender-neutral statements about sexual orientation. Neither participant nor target gender eliminated or reversed this effect. Additionally, we investigated multiple explanations (moderators) of the perceived difference in fragility between heterosexual identity and gay identity and found that higher estimates of the gay/lesbian population decreased the difference between the (higher) perceived fragility of heterosexual identity and the (lower) perceived fragility of gay identity.

Original languageEnglish
JournalSocial Psychology
Volume52
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)143-161
Number of pages19
ISSN1864-9335
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work has been supported by the European Research Council (fund no. Starting grant 2017 to Keon West).

    Research areas

  • estimates of gay/lesbian population, fragile sexual orientation, gay, heterosexuality, social normativity

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