Implicit pride and prejudice: A heterosexual phenomenon?

Findings from American poll data spanning the last two decades reveal that attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women are becoming more liberal. Despite these trends, however, self-report data may fall victim to a range of confounds including selfpresentational biases. Recently, researchers have begun to assess implicit homonegativity (i.e., attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women that are relatively unconscious and beyond volitional control) using a range of implicit measures. This chapter reviews the studies published to date in the area of implicit homonegativity. The findings show that implicit attitudes as measured by the Implicit Association Test, the Sequential Priming Procedure and the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure differ as a function of group status (i.e., heterosexual versus non-heterosexual). Specifically, implicit in-group “pride” and out-group “prejudice” were repeatedly produced by heterosexual participants. In contrast, non-heterosexuals were relatively egalitarian in their expression of implicit attitudes. Furthermore, in many of the studies, a divergence in performance between implicit and explicit attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women was observed.