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Helping Behavior as a Subtle Measure of Discrimination Against Lesbians and Gay Men: German Data and a Comparison Across Countries 1
Author(s) -
Gabriel Ute,
Banse Rainer
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.0021-9029.2006.00025.x
Subject(s) - psychology , german , homosexuality , social psychology , ranking (information retrieval) , variation (astronomy) , physics , archaeology , machine learning , computer science , astrophysics , psychoanalysis , history
To unobtrusively assess attitudes toward lesbians and gay men, the wrong‐number technique was used in a field experiment in Germany. The results are compared to studies using the same paradigm in Switzerland, Great Britain, and the United States. This approach gives a realistic picture of intercultural differences in social behavior against lesbians and gay men. Across studies, the results indicated that homosexuals are less likely to receive help than are heterosexuals. The variation of this effect between countries closely corresponded to the ranking of attitudes toward homosexuality assessed in survey studies. Contrary to survey studies, however, women showed only marginally less negative attitudes toward gay persons than men, when actual helping behavior was used as an attitude index.