Heroes against homophobia: does elevation uniquely block homophobia by inhibiting disgust?

Homophobia has decreased in past decades, but gut-level disgust towards gay men lingers. It has been suggested that disgust can be reduced by inducing its proposed opposite emotion, elevation. Research suggests elevation might reduce homophobia, but only general elevation (not elevation evoked by gay people) and general attitudes (rather than disgust) have been studied. Nor has elevation's effect on homophobia been differentiated from effects of related emotions, such as admiration or surprise. We pretested a series of news stories featuring either a gay man or a man of unspecified sexuality that were intended to distinctly elicit elevation, admiration, or surprise. We pre-registered the prediction that an elevation-inducing story would reduce negative attitudes by reducing disgust. In Study 1 (N = 593), participants who read elevation-inducing stories did not express more positive attitudes or less disgust towards gay men than those who read stories inducing admiration or surprise. The admiration stories elicited similar or lower levels of disgust than the elevation stories. Study 2 (N = 588), replicated the findings of Study 1 with improved stimuli and measures. Both studies suggest that elevation may not uniquely reduce homophobia, as elevation and admiration have similar effects on this prejudice.

Negotiating Theory When Doing Practice: A Systematic Review of Qualitative Research on Interventions to Reduce Homophobia.

We performed a systematic review of qualitative research on interventions to reduce homophobia. Specifically, we conducted a thematic analysis of participant feedback given in 30 qualitative and mixed-methods studies. Participants often described interventions as "eye-opening." However, they also criticized many interventions for their mismatch with the social, historical, or institutional context in which they were conducted. Some participants rejected the interventions altogether, describing them as offensive or disgusting. We drew three conclusions. First, participants not only were actively making sense of the interventions but also were often aware of philosophical and political tensions (especially liberal vs. queer approaches). Second, participants sometimes used the perceived inadequacy of the intervention for the local context as an argument to resist change. Finally, tensions in participant feedback (eye-opening vs. disgusting) can be read as evidence that reducing homophobia is "dirty work": such work is both vital for society and despised by many.