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How would you react? : exploring heterosexual women's reactions to confrontations of their own homonegative behaviour

To date, little research has explored the utility of inter-personal confrontation as a strategy for the reduction of homonegative attitudes and/or behaviours among heterosexual women. Consequently, the purpose of the current study was to explore three unique aspects of such confrontations among a sample of heterosexual women from the University of Saskatchewan. These three aspects were: 1) to what extent do high- and low-prejudiced womens reactions to confrontations of subtle homonegative behaviour differ; 2) what differences exist in the way that heterosexual women respond to bias directed towards gay men than to bias directed towards lesbian women; 3) what effect does the vested interest of a confronter have on heterosexual womens reaction to confrontations of homonegative behaviour. A 2(target condition) X 2(modern homonegativity endorsement) X 4(confronter type) between-subjects design was used wherein 286 female volunteers completed a questionnaire booklet developed for the project. The questionnaire booklet asked participants to first imagine themselves in a scenario where they would be confronted for engaging in subtle homonegative behaviour and to then indicated how they would think, feel, and behave in response to such a confrontation. The results indicated that low-prejudice participants reacted with greater negative-self directed affect (e.g., guilt) and compunction (e.g., apologize for behaviour) than high-prejudice participants when confronted by either a gay man or lesbian woman. Such reactions are important as they mark the initiation of a self-regulatory cycle that allows the individual to avoid such biased behaviour in the future. Limitations of the study and directions for future research concerning inter-personal confrontations of homonegativity are also presented.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:SSU.etd-10302008-101354
Date05 November 2008
CreatorsRogers, Edwin Joseph Russell
ContributorsWormith, J. Stephen, Morrison, Melanie A., Kowalski, Kent, Cochrane, Donald B.
PublisherUniversity of Saskatchewan
Source SetsLibrary and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
Typetext
Formatapplication/pdf
Sourcehttp://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-10302008-101354/
Rightsunrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report.

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