A Touch of Homophobia
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between prejudiced behavior against the gay community and its effect on compliance. Earlier research has suggested compliance rate could be lower when one is asked to complete a task by a member of the same sex, perhaps due to homophobia (Dollinski, 2010). The current study looked more directly at how homophobia was related to compliance. First, a confederate asked participants to sign a petition. The participants then completed an explicit measure of homophobia, a questionnaire, and an implicit measure of homophobia, an Implicit Association Test. The results of this study showed that while those who did not comply did not score significantly higher on explicit measures, they did score higher on implicit measures. The results suggest a possible link between homophobia and compliance.