Is There a Gender Difference Regarding Perceived Efficacy of Openly Gay Tutors?

Is There a Gender Difference Regarding Perceived Efficacy of Openly Gay Tutors?

Research has shown that many college students have more negative attitudes toward homosexuals than toward other minority groups (Liang and Alimo, 2005), even when they do not openly endorse homophobic attitudes (Nosek, 2007). For example, lectures given by homosexuals were rated as having lower quality than identical lectures given by heterosexuals, possibly demonstrating subtle prejudice (Ewing, Stukas and Sheehan, 2003). In addition, recent findings indicate that heterosexual women tend to have a more favorable perception than heterosexual men of male homosexuality (Herek, 1998). In a between-participants design, forty heterosexual undergraduate students will be exposed to a male tutor with a shirt depicting either the words “Proud to be gay” (gay tutor condition) or “Proud to be at NSU” (control condition). It is predicted that participants will rate the perceived homosexual tutor as less knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful than the tutor in the control condition. Furthermore, heterosexual males are predicted to show higher levels of prejudice than heterosexual females against a perceived homosexual tutor. The findings will have implications about the unconscious prejudiced attitudes affecting homosexual men in an academic context.