A study suggests that legalizing same-sex marriage may help decrease anti-gay bias. Social norms can influence behaviors and attitudes, but it is unclear how local legislation influences citizens' attitudes. To examine how state-level legalization of gay marriage influenced anti-gay bias in the United States, Eugene K. Ofosu and colleagues geolocated 949,664 respondents who completed surveys between 2005 and 2016 that measured implicit and explicit anti-gay bias through Project Implicit. In addition to analyzing anti-gay bias among self-reported heterosexuals and individuals who did not report their sexuality, the authors also examined nationally representative data from the American National Election Studies dataset, which included 10,870 respondents, from 2008, 2012, and 2016. In all samples, both implicit and explicit anti-gay bias decreased over time across the United States in states that legalized gay marriage. Bias decreased at almost double the rate in states that enacted state-level legalization, compared with states that did not enact local legalization. However, in states that did not locally pass legalization, anti-gay bias increased following federal legalization. The effects were consistent across all models. The findings suggest that legislation locality may moderate the biases of local residents, and that legislation and attitudes may reinforce each other, according to the authors.
###
Article #18-06000: "Same-sex marriage legalization associated with reduced implicit and explicit antigay bias," by Eugene K. Ofosu, Michelle K. Chambers, Jacqueline M. Chen, and Eric Hehman.
MEDIA CONTACT: Eric Hehman, McGill University, Montreal, CANADA; email: <eric.hehman@mcgill.ca>
Journal
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences