Heterosexual College Students' Attitudes Towards Homosexuality:the Role Of Sexual Orientation And Facial Gender Characteristics

With the development of society,the public is more and more tolerant of homosexuality,but the phenomenon of exclusion of homosexuals has occurred.It is helpful to deepen the public's understanding of homosexuality and reduce discrimination by proving the specific reasons for rejection of homosexuals.Previous studies have found that the negative attitude of the public to homosexuals is most likely to be caused by two factors: sexual orientation,per se,and anti gender characteristics,but there are still a large number of disputes between the two ways.In this study,146 college students were tested by face pictures which were through strict screening and treatment as the experimental materials,with the experimental procedures designed by E-Prime program,to test whether the negative attitude of the public towards homosexuals is derived from the sexual orientation itself or the anti gender characteristics.It included two sub-studies: Study 1 was about the heterosexual students' attitude and sexual orientation judging tendency to the faces of different gender characteristics;Study 2 was about the role of sexual orientation and facial gender characteristics in the college students' attitudes towards homosexuals.The conclusions were as follows:1.Heterosexual college students held a negative attitude towards the targets of gender-atypical facial features,and held a positive attitude towards that of gender-typical facial features,the difference between the two groups was significant;2.The ratio that heterosexual college students categorized the targets of gender-typical facial features as heterosexuality was significantly higher than the ratio that they categorized them as homosexuality,and the ratio that heterosexual college students categorized the targets of gender-atypical facial features as homosexuality was significantly higher than the ratio that they categorized them as heterosexuality;3.Heterosexual college students evaluated the targets of gender-atypical facial features more negatively than those of gender-typical facial features,regardless of the targets' sexual orientation;4.Heterosexual college students evaluated the targets of homosexual more negatively than those of heterosexual,regardless of the targets' gender features.5.Sexual orientation and facial gender characteristics are the reasons for the negative attitude towards homosexuality.