Hate crimes and gay men: The role of attitudes and threats to masculinity.

Abstract

Individual difference theories suggest that hate crimes against gay men occur because of an individual's level of bias, but emerging theories about the confines of the masculine gender role suggest that hate crimes against gay men can be one way for men to prove their masculinity. Thus, three studies examined psychological and behavioral changes for men with positive and negative attitudes toward gay men who received threats to their masculinity. Results indicate that attitudes toward gay men predict male participants' ratings of a supposed gay partner, but that there is an interaction between attitudes and exposure to a masculinity threat in participant's self-evaluations of their gender-stereotypical traits. Further analysis showed that this change was not due to changes in perceptions of feminine attributes, but rather a drop in perception of masculine attributes by the participants with negative attitudes toward gay men. A computer task designed to measure violence demonstrated that participants, regardless of their level of homophobia, used the video game to hit their partner more, and did not decrease their rate of hitting over time after they had received a threat to their masculinity. Implications for understanding hate crimes and future prevention strategies are discussed.