New Study Examines How Sexual Minorities Perceive Sexual orientation

Rebecca Lewis June 24, 2013

Beliefs about sexual orientation are strongly connected to how individuals perceive sexual minorities and may strongly predict positive or negative attitudes towards them – new research suggests.

In a paper published in the Journal of Counselling Psychology, researchers at Barrett, the Honours College at Arizona State University, studied how the sexual minority (bisexual, lesbian, gay, and transgender individuals) perceive sexual orientation. In separate studies, the researchers conducted a large online survey asking participants to rate their endorsement of ideas such as ‘Individuals choose their sexual orientation’ and ‘it is impossible to truly change one’s sexual orientation’.

According to Patrick Grzanka, the lead author, when the issue about ‘choice’ is involved in the spectrum of social orientation beliefs, things got really complicated in very interesting ways. He said their findings are especially important because beliefs about sexual orientation are strongly connected to how people perceive and deal with the sexual minorities.

The researchers used a new instrument to assess the beliefs of the participants. It was called the Sexual Orientation Beliefs Scale (SOBS). Previous studies used to divide beliefs into two opposing categories: beliefs that sexuality is socially constructed, and beliefs that sexual orientation is an essential, natural part of self. Using the new tool, Grzanka and his team found that people exhibited a range of beliefs that cannot be easily fit into the ‘social constructionist’ and ‘essentialist’ groups.

Grzanka hopes to see the new instrument being used in social research, advocacy and policymaking regarding sexual minorities. It may also be used by psychologists and sociologists studying sexual orientation and sexual identities.

"The dream when you create an instrument such as this is that people will find it compelling and want to use it to study what people believe and to ultimately help improve attitudes toward sexual minorities and influence contemporary social policy. That is what we hope will happen with SOBS," said Grzanka, who was recently named outstanding faculty member of the year by ASU’s office of LGBTQA Services.

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Newly published research explores beliefs about sexual orientation