A Comparative Study of the Explicit and Implicit Attitudes of Heterosexual College Students in China and Canada towards Lesbian Women

In a heterosexual-based sociocultural environment, homosexuality has often been ostracized. Negative social attitudes towards homosexuality has impacted the legalization of gay marriage, of LGBTQ2 peoples’ access to social support and their mental health experiences. Before the 1990s, researchers often studied social attitudes at only a conscious, or explicit, level. Later research has suggested that implicit social cognitive processes also play an important role in the formation and changing of social attitudes towards others. Research with Chinese college students has shown that that they hold a positive explicit attitude towards homosexuality, whereas implicit bias exists. However, there are only few studies on the causes of this phenomenon, and, therefore, there is little research examining explanations for why Chinese college students have a negative attitude towards lesbian women.

This work will be an extensive review of existing literature to identify variables that may be contributing to a difference in implicit and explicit attitudes towards lesbian women in Canadian and Chinese samples. Based on these identified variables, this work will propose an appropriate quantitative or qualitative methodology that would be appropriate for answering my research questions of interest.

Faculty Supervisor:

Roy Gillis

Student:

Partner:

Zhejiang University

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Education

University:

University of Toronto

Program: