Abstract
Many people in the United States express anti-LGBT attitudes and oppose LGBT rights. These views are perpetuated when others, including allies, tolerate expressions of anti-LGBT bias. In this study, we adapted and validated a measure of tolerance of homonegativity and transnegativity (TOHT), and assessed its associations with evaluations of LGBT people, straight people, support for LGBT rights, and system-justifying ideologies among heterosexual, straight, binary-gendered/non-trans (i.e., cisgender) women and men who identified as liberal, moderate, or conservative (N = 295). Participants completed measures of TOHT, evaluations of LGBT people, support for LGBT rights, authoritarianism, religiosity, and contact with LGBT people. Analyses by gender and political ideology indicated that all groups tolerated anti-LGBT bias to some degree. Among conservatives, women (vs. men) endorsed TOHT more and exhibited less support for LGBT rights; the opposite was true of liberals. As expected, higher TOHT scores were associated with cooler evaluations of LGBT people and less support for LGBT rights. However, after control- ling for system justifying motives, that was only significant for conservatives and moderates potentially suggesting that conservatives and liberals may endorse TOHT for different reasons. Overall, findings suggest that groups traditionally regarded as allies (e.g., women, liberals) tolerate attitudes that disadvantage LGBT people.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-2025
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.1111/asap.12449
Repository Citation
Folberg, Abigail M.; Hunt, Jennifer S.; and Riggle, Ellen D. B., "Tolerance of homonegativity and transnegativity predicts negative evaluations of LGBT people and LGBT-supportive policies among US-based heterosexual, cisgender participants" (2025). Gender and Women's Studies Faculty Publications. 6.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/gws_facpub/6
Notes/Citation Information
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. © 2025 The Author(s). Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.