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A variety of motivations underlie
sexual prejudice. One way to understand those motives
is to ask how a particular heterosexual's antigay
attitudes benefit her or him psychologically.
This functional approach has been used to
understand attitudes in many different domains. Its
basic assumption is that people hold and express
particular attitudes because they derive psychological
benefit from doing so. For any individual, attitudes
toward different objects can serve different
functions. Moreover, different individuals can express
attitudes toward an object that appear to be identical
but actually serve different functions. A final
assumption of this approach is that attitudes are
dynamic and are affected by situational variables.
Different situations make different psychological
needs salient, which can affect the extent to which a
particular attitude is functional or not in that
situation.
Thus, a functional perspective assumes that
heterosexuals have different motivations for their
attitudes toward lesbians, gay men, and homosexuality.
Four principal psychological functions have been
identified that underlie those attitudes.
First, attitudes serving an experiential
function assist heterosexuals in making sense of
their previous interactions with gay people. They do
this by helping the individual to fit those
interactions into a larger world view, one that is
organized primarily in terms of the individual's own
self interest. Some heterosexuals accept gay people in
general on the basis of pleasant interaction
experiences with a specific gay man or lesbian. Others
hold negative attitudes toward the entire group
primarily as a result of their unpleasant experiences
with particular gay men or lesbians.
Sexual prejudice can only serve an experiential
function when the heterosexual has had personal
contact with gay men or lesbians. For those who have
not had such contact, homosexuality and gay people are
primarily symbols. Whereas attitudes toward people
with whom one has direct experience function primarily
to organize and make sense of those experiences,
attitudes toward symbols serve a different kind of
function. Such attitudes help people to increase their
self-esteem by expressing important aspects of
themselves – by declaring (to themselves and to
others) what sort of people they are. Affirming who
one is often is accomplished by distancing oneself
from or even attacking people who represent the sort
of person one is not (or does not want to be).
Three different attitude functions have been
identified that serve these symbolic purposes.
- Attitudes serving a value-expressive
function enable heterosexuals to affirm their
belief in and adherence to important values that
are closely related to their self concepts.
- When attitudes serve a
social expressive function, expressing the
attitude strengthens one's sense of belonging to a
particular group and helps an individual to gain
acceptance, approval, or love from other people
whom she or he considers important (e.g., peers,
family, neighbors).
- Finally, attitudes
serving an ego defensive function lower a
person's anxiety resulting from her or his
unconscious psychological conflicts, such as those
surrounding sexuality or gender.
It is important to recognize the nexus between
individual attitudes and cultural heterosexism. A
particular manifestation of sexual prejudice can serve
one or more of these functions only when the
individual's psychological needs converge with the
culture's ideology about homosexuality. Antigay
prejudice can be value-expressive only when an
individual's self-concept is closely tied to values
that also have become socially defined as antithetical
to homosexuality. It can be social expressive only
insofar as an individual strongly needs to be accepted
by members of a social group that rejects gay people
or homosexuality. It can be defensive only when
lesbians and gay men are culturally defined in a way
that links them to an individual's own psychological
conflicts.
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