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Balance Without Equality: Just World Beliefs, the Gay Affluence Myth, and Support for Gay Rights

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Abstract

The harmfulness of negative stereotypes toward gay and lesbian people has been established, but the effect of positive stereotypes has not been thoroughly examined. Gay and lesbian Americans continue to struggle against interpersonal and institutionalized discrimination, yet many people do not see them as a politically disadvantaged group, and voter support for gay rights has been inconsistent and somewhat unpredictable. Drawing on previous research regarding reactions to disadvantaged and advantaged targets, we examined the social cognitive underpinnings of support for gay rights. After accounting for general anti-gay attitudes and degree of religious affiliation, we found that global endorsement of just world beliefs negatively predicted support for gay rights, and that this effect was mediated by an inclination to perceive discrimination against gay and lesbian people as less of an issue in American society. Additionally, we found that endorsement of the ‘gay affluence’ stereotype also negatively predicted support of gay rights, particularly among non-student adults, and that this effect was moderated by character beliefs about gay and lesbian people pertaining to wealth-deservingness.

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Notes

  1. In drafting our materials for the current project, we avoided bifurcation of the broader category of ‘gay’ people, because (at least in the realm of legal advocacy) GLAs must either succeed or fail together, and to the extent gay men are the more salient group when the category ‘gay’ is mentioned, that is largely reflective of the state of public discourse on this topic. It is assumed that many participants in our study considered only gay men when making their responses; however, it is unlikely that we could have measured the extent to which this occurred without introducing bias, and (in so far as it was reflective of the way people think about these issues on a daily basis) we do not feel it compromised the overarching goals of the project.

  2. In the second pilot study, we also confirmed that the opposite pole to each of these traits {lazy, uncommitted, ignorant, stupid, low in perseverance, unimaginative, and dishonest} was indeed negatively associated with perceptions of wealth-deservingness.

  3. A parallel analysis was also conducted in Stata (StataCorp, 2005) to ensure that there were no additional, meaningful factors that could be extracted (i.e., any other factors that could be extracted were at or below chance level, see Ender, 2006).

  4. Most college students do not yet have careers, or a substantial independent income, and the relevance/impact of their family’s socioeconomic status is blunted somewhat while in school.

  5. The literature on the influence of race and ethnicity on attitudes toward gay and lesbian people is mixed, but most consistently suggests that White participants report more favorable attitudes, while Black/African American participants report more negative attitudes. Thus, for the present analysis, race was coded as two dummy variables: 1, 0 for White participants, 0, 1 for Black/African American participants, and 0, 0 for the remaining participants.

  6. Correlations between all the variables of interest can be found in Appendix 2.

  7. While both the student and non-student samples rated gay affluence significantly higher than the theoretical midpoint of 9.5 (aggregating the two scales, possible scores ranged from 2 to 17) the non-student sample did so by more than a point (M = 10.75, SD = 2.42), whereas the student sample did so by less than half a point (M = 9.94, SD = 2.16).

  8. Following the procedures outlined by Aiken and West (1991), mean-centered versions of these variables were used, both in the computation of the interaction term and in the subsequent regression analysis, in order to reduce potential effects of collinearity.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, University of South Florida, 4202 E. Fowler Ave., PCD 4118G, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA

    Vanessa E. Hettinger & Joseph A. Vandello

  2. University of Wisconsin–Superior, Superior, USA

    Vanessa E. Hettinger

Authors
  1. Vanessa E. Hettinger
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  2. Joseph A. Vandello
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Vanessa E. Hettinger.

Appendices

Appendix 1: Gay Rights Support Questionnaire

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Very unsupportive

     

Very supportive

  1. 1)

    How supportive would you be of a policy change which would allow gays to serve openly in the U.S. military?

  2. 2)

    How supportive would you be of a change in national law which would allow gays to marry in every state?

  3. 3)

    How supportive would you be of a law in your state allowing gays to marry?

  4. 4)

    How supportive would you be of a change in national law which would officially recognize the marriages of gays whose marriages are legally recognized in their own state?

  5. 5)

    How supportive would you be of a national law which would allow gays to adopt children in every state?

  6. 6)

    How supportive would you be of a law in your state allowing gays to adopt children?

  7. 7)

    How supportive would you be of a national law which would include gays as a protected group for purposes of employment discrimination?

  8. 8)

    How supportive would you be of a law in your state which would include gays as a protected group for purposes of employment discrimination?

  9. 9)

    How supportive would you be of a national law which would include gays as a protected group for all existing hate crimes legislation?

  10. 10)

    How supportive would you be of a law in your state which would include gays as a protected group for all existing hate crimes legislation?

Note: From the time, this project was in the early development/piloting stages to the present, a number of positive advancements in the realm of LGBT advocacy have taken place. While we do not feel these developments negate what we were able to learn from this project, revision of this scale would be advisable for follow-up studies.

Appendix 2: Bivariate correlations among variables of interest

 

Sample

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

Primary variables

 1. Support

.07

            

 2. Affluence

.17**

.04

           

 3. Character

−.07

−.31***

−.35***

          

 4. JWB

−.10†

−.15*

−.07

−.004

         

 5. Amnestic

.16**

−.41***

.02

.20**

.16**

        

Secondary/demographic variables

 6. Homophobia

−.07

−.82***

−.15*

.37***

.11†

.39***

       

 7. Religiosity

−.01

−.41***

−.01

.07

−.02

.14*

.42***

      

 8. Sex

−.12*

−.09

−.02

.07

.04

.00

.05

−.19**

     

 9. Age

.77***

−.02

.15*

−.12*

−.11†

.14*

.05

.10†

−.16**

    

 10. Political

.04

−.36***

.02

.04

.18**

.25***

.34***

.25***

.01

.09

   

 11. Race (W)

.22***

.09

.14*

−.12*

−04

−.02

−.15*

−.11†

.06

.21***

.14*

  

 12. Race (B)

−.20**

−.10

−.18**

.11†

−.07

−.01

.23***

.12*

−.06

−.16**

−.16**

−.56***

 

 13. Income

.16**

−.02

.09

−.04

−.03

−.04

−.06

.10

.01

.17**

.12†

.10

−.16**

  1. Sample was coded 1 for non-student, 0 for student; affluence = affluence perceptions; character was coded so that higher values correspond to more negative views; sex was coded 1 for male, 0 for female; higher values for political indicate greater conservatism; race (W) was coded 1 for white, 0 for non-white; race (B) was coded 1 for black, 0 for non-black. Significance of correlations is indicated by asterisks
  2. * p < .05; ** p < .01; *** p < .001; † p < .10

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Hettinger, V.E., Vandello, J.A. Balance Without Equality: Just World Beliefs, the Gay Affluence Myth, and Support for Gay Rights. Soc Just Res 27, 444–463 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11211-014-0226-2

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