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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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