A stone in the soup? Changes in sexual prejudice and essentialist beliefs among British students in a class on LGBT psychology

Hegarty, PJ (2010) A stone in the soup? Changes in sexual prejudice and essentialist beliefs among British students in a class on LGBT psychology Psychology and Sexuality, 1 (1). 3 - 20. ISSN 1941-9899

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Abstract

Biological theories of sexual orientation, typically presented in human sexuality classes, are considered by many social psychologists to cause reductions in students' sexual prejudice. Yet when biological theories were not presented to 36 psychology students in a 10-week seminar on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) psychology, both sexual prejudice and two forms of essentialist thinking reduced significantly. Prejudice reduction was causally related to decreased essentialist belief in clear boundaries between sexual orientation categories but not to decreased belief in the immutability of sexual orientation categories. Students characterised belief in the fluidity of sexual orientation categories as enlightened and empowering in their own words. This cross-lagged study confirms earlier cross-sectional studies showing that sexual prejudice is causally related to ‘natural kind’ beliefs about sexual orientation. It further shows that the typical practice of teaching human sexuality courses from a biological perspective is not the cause of prejudice reduction in this educational context.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is an electronic version of an article published in Hegarty, PJ (2010) A stone in the soup? Changes in sexual prejudice and essentialist beliefs among British students in a class on LGBT psychology. Psychology and Sexuality, 1(1), 3 - 20. PSYCHOLOGY AND SEXUALITY is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19419891003634356
Related URLs:	Publisher
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences > Psychology
Depositing User:	Symplectic Elements
Date Deposited:	01 Mar 2012 12:18
Last Modified:	23 Sep 2013 18:57
URI:	http://epubs.surrey.ac.uk/id/eprint/72254

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