Mental representations of gay men: The role of willingness to contact and disgust sensitivity

Abstract

Our behavioral intentions towards outgroups might be related with how we picture them in our heads. In the current study, we investigated willingness to engage in contact with gay men, and disgust sensitivity as possible factors that might be associated with our mental images regarding gay men. We adopted the Reverse Correlation paradigm to form the mental images. Our results suggested that people had biased representations of gay men based on how willing they are to engage in contact with them. Regarding disgust, we showed that to better understand the relationship between disgust, mental representations of gay men and behavioral intentions, a more detailed investigation of different dimensions of disgust is warranted. Moreover, we also showed that the otherwise favorable cues such as femininity and happiness in faces might not always be utilized resulting in a general unwillingness to engage in contact. These results highlight the importance of valence information in stereotype content and the fit between the valence and one’s evaluation of the group, and most importantly, our mental image regarding a group and its relationship to our behavioral tendencies.