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Social Psychology Of Homosexuality Essay

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Heterosexual orientation in many countries, and in many different cultures are the norm. While homosexual orientation is not. These negative reactions towards gays and lesbians like most things, have been learned. The social influences that we are exposed to affects how we act towards homosexuals. The pressure of what it means to be a boy or a girl is highly placed upon us at very early age. It helps us shape our minds about what it means to be a male or a female, and what we think about gender. Thus shaping our cognitive influences on to what it means to masculine and feminine and liking someone of the same sex is not believed to be a part of the status quo. Another reason is that we stereotype humans into generalized characteristics and …show more content…

The parents reinforce certain behaviors and activities that may or may not be related to their gender schema. A homophobic parent will not reinforce their children who engage in activities unrelated to their gender schema. So if children grew up learning that homosexuality is a sin or wrong, they react towards gay men in a hostile way. When they grow up they will then teach their children that exact same thing they learned as a child and the cycle will continue. For a very long time social psychologists have been trying to understand why some humans hold such strong negative outlooks on gay men. William James theorized that acceptance is learned while repulsion is instinctive (Herek, 1984). The disgust of homosexual activity is a normal reaction, for what of those who developed sexual instinct correctly (Herek, 1984). During Herek’s, (1984) research he accumulated multiple studies in the hopes of finding a correlation between negative attitudes towards homosexuals and the reasons behind it. The results he found were that homophobes are less likely to have individual contact with homosexuals, are older and not well accomplished, attend church and retain some sort of religious philosophy. The environment has more preventive attitudes towards traditional sex roles, and negativity is the model (Hereki, 1984). Gay men endure more

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