Table of contents:
- Homophobic people often have psychological problems
- Gay bullying and violence against the LGBTQ + community
- People with homophobia have gay tendencies?
Homophobic and anti-gay attitudes can say a lot about a person's characteristics, according to a recent study.
Not everyone who disagrees or dislikes homosexuality can be called homophobic. What makes someone called a person homophobic is if he has intolerance and irrational fear of homosexual men and women. Homophobia is often interpreted as a medium of prejudice and hatred. However, studies have found that homophobia can be linked to psychological problems.
Homophobic people often have psychological problems
The research group headed by Dr. Emmanuela A. Jannini, president Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine, found certain psychological traits that have the potential to foster a homophobic personality.
Often times, when we confront people and form a relationship (in whatever form) with them, our psychological responses to people operate on a spectrum of positive and negative emotions. For example, often we ask ourselves whether this person is trustworthy or not, or if we feel safe or anxious around them, this is how we judge a relationship. If these emotions tend to gravitate toward the negative side of the spectrum and generate anxiety, we tend to generalize this relationship as a defense mechanism in order to feel safer in the situation.
Self-defense mechanisms can be classified into two categories: mature (responding to adults) or immature (such as children). Healthy defense mechanisms include the ability to regulate emotions and be independent of others for self-validation. Immature defense mechanisms usually include impulsivity, passive aggression, or resistance to trouble.
Researchers then used this theory to uncover how defense mechanisms play a role in homophobia, as well as how certain psychological disorders might be linked to this form of discrimination. The researchers asked 551 Italian students aged 18-30 years to fill out a questionnaire about how much homophobia they had, as well as their psychopathology, including levels of depression, anxiety and psychoticism. Participants had to rate themselves the level of their homophobia, with 25 agree-disagree statements (on a scale of 1-5), such as: 'Gay people make me nervous'; "I don't think homosexuals should be close to children"; "I tease gay people and make jokes about gay people"; and, 'It doesn't matter to me if I have gay friends.'
The result, researchers can conclude that homophobia is more likely to be owned by men than women. They also found that participants who displayed traits of homophobia were more likely to exploit immature defense mechanisms, indicating a maladaptive and problematic approach to social situations they felt uncomfortable with.
Ultimately, and most importantly, researchers were able to find strong evidence for the nature of psychoticism in homophobic individuals. These people are more likely to display psychoticism, which, in extreme cases, can be a predictor of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia, as well as personality disorders. In its minor form, psychoticism manifests as a state of hostility and anger.
On the other hand, participants who exhibited more mature and logical forms of defense mechanisms, along with depression, had lower statistics to display homophobic traits. Jannini believes this is another way of confirming that homosexuality is not the main root cause, but rather a group of people who feel problematic about this issue.
However, this does not mean that homophobic people have psychotic symptoms. Psychoticism is a personality trait characterized by harshness, violence, anger, and aggression towards other people around him.
Gay bullying and violence against the LGBTQ + community
As many as 89.3 percent of LGBTQ + (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer) in Indonesia admit to having experienced violence, both psychologically and physically, because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. As many as 17.3 percent of LGBTQ + had contemplated suicide and 16.4 percent of them had attempted suicide more than once.
Interestingly, the tendency of cases of violence and suicide is not only seen in LGBTQ + people, but also in their family and closest relatives. It is not uncommon for close family members to become targets of bullying due to homophobia in society, and it is not uncommon for them to end up isolating the person who claims to be LGBTQ +, or committing suicide.
Furthermore, a study conducted by Shire Professional, a British occupational psychology consultancy institute in 2009 showed that homophobic people tend to have discriminatory and racist traits that are more pronounced than other groups.
Of the 60 participants aged 18-65 years with personal hatred towards the gay and lesbian community (35% anti gay and 41% anti lesbian), 28% of them also showed prejudice and antipathy towards Asian ethnic people, 25% had prejudice and negative attitudes towards black people, and 17% have prejudice and discriminatory attitudes towards Southeast Asian people.
People with homophobia have gay tendencies?
Reporting from Huffingtonpost.com, a recent study found that people who show a predisposition to homophobic attitudes are more likely to be gay. A research team from University of Rochester, University of California, and University of Essex conducted a series of psychological tests and found that heterosexual individuals often show strong attraction to people of the same gender.
The results of the study suggest that this heterosexual group of participants may feel threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of these tendencies within themselves, which they may not be aware of because they are subconscious. This study analyzed four different experiments in the United States and Germany. Netta Weinstein, lead researcher, said the study provided psychological evidence that could prove that homophobia is an external manifestation of suppressed sexual arousal.
Furthermore, Ryan Richard, professor of psychology University of Rochester, said that people who have homophobic tendencies, who have prejudice and discriminatory attitudes towards gays and lesbians, are more likely to have a gap between subconscious attraction to same-gender partners than they thought.
