Gregory M. Herek's research while affiliated with University of California, Davis and other places
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Publications (97)
Hate crimes based on the victim’s perceived sexual orientation or gender identity first came to be identified in the United States as a social problem requiring national attention in the 1980s. Since then, the need for accurate documentation of the incidence and prevalence of such crimes has been an ongoing concern for policymakers, advocates, and...
This article addresses the topic of homophobia. Recent events might make it seem as though it is dying out. Hate crimes based on a person's sexual orientation or gender presentation can now be prosecuted by the federal government, even when they occur in states lacking their own hate crime laws. Numerous states have changed their laws to permit sam...
Using a community sample of 197 people living with HIV/AIDS, we examined how awareness of societal stigma (felt stigma) and negative feelings toward oneself as a member of a stigmatized group (self-stigma) are related to psychological well-being. Both felt stigma and self-stigma were significantly correlated with symptoms of depression and anxiety,...
Despite shifts toward greater acceptance in U.S. public opinion and policy, lesbian, gay, and bisexual people remain widely stigmatized. This article reviews empirical research on sexual prejudice, that is, heterosexuals' internalization of cultural stigma, manifested in the form of negative attitudes toward sexual minorities and same-sex desires a...
This article summarizes a stigma-based analysis of anti-equality marriage laws and campaigns. Three major themes are discussed. First, being denied the legal right to marry because of one's sexual orientation is an instance of stigma. Second, being the target of stigma is stressful, and the political campaigns surrounding anti-equality marriage ame...
It is useful to recall that our work as scientists will be at its best when it simultaneously tackles real-world problems
and enriches our understanding of basic biological, psychological, or social processes. A good theory can help us do both.
All empirical research is based on assumptions. Even purely “descriptive” or “exploratory” studies necess...
This article briefly describes how psychology, psychiatry, and the mental health professions (here collectively referred to as Psychology) treated sexual orientation differences as deficits for much of the 20th century, as well as some of the negative consequences that practice had for sexual minorities. The 1970s witnessed a remarkable turnaround...
Using data from a US national probability sample of self-identified lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults (N = 662), this article reports population parameter estimates for a variety of demographic, psychological, and social variables. Special emphasis is given to information with relevance to public policy and law. Compared with the US adult populatio...
Opinions and feelings about the situation of working women were assessed among a sample of men in high-prestige and low-prestige occupations interviewed in 1979 and 1980. The men varied considerably in how much sympathy they felt with working women. Men in high-prestige occupations were reliably more aware of and upset about the true extent of sex...
Homosexuality refers to sexual behaviors, desires, attractions, and relationships among people of the same sex, as well as to the culture, identities, and communities associated with them. The term encompasses at least five phenomena that are often though not always related. First, it is used to describe specific instances of sexual behavior with a...
This article describes a social psychological framework for understanding sexual stigma, and it reports data on sexual minority individuals' stigma-related experiences. The framework distinguishes between stigma's manifestations in society's institutions (heterosexism) and among individuals. The latter include enacted sexual stigma (overt negative...
Karen Franklin, PhD, is a forensic psychologist and an adjunct professor at the California School of Professional Psychology. In the late 1990s, she conducted the first published research into the psychosocial motivations of antigay violence perpetrators. The research won a Harry Frank Guggenheim Fellowship and a Monette/Horwitz Trust Award. Her pe...
Stigma complicates the treatment of HIV worldwide. We examined whether a multi-component framework, initially consisting of enacted, felt normative, and internalized forms of individual stigma experiences, could be used to understand HIV-related stigma in Southern India. In Study 1, qualitative interviews with a convenience sample of 16 people livi...
Using survey responses collected via the Internet from a U.S. national probability sample of gay, lesbian, and bisexual adults (N = 662), this article reports prevalence estimates of criminal victimization and related experiences based on the target's sexual orientation. Approximately 20% of respondents reported having experienced a person or prope...
This chapter provides a review of the data regarding the prevalence and correlates of violent victimization among gay and bisexual men in the United States. It specifically focuses on the well-recognized problem of anti-gay violence (hate crimes) and the much less studied and discussed problem of intimate partner violence in male same-sex couples....
This article explores theoretical and applied questions that are relevant to social scientists' efforts to understand and confront sexual stigma. A framework is presented for conceptualizing such stigma as a cultural phenomenon with structural and individual manifestations. The latter include enacted stigma and felt stigma, as well as internalized...
In their comments on my article discussing the social science data relevant to societal recognition of same-sex committed relationships (see record 2006-11202-004 ), Rosik and Byrd (see record 2007-14606-024 ) and Schiller (see record 2007-14606-025 ) criticized aspects of my analysis and raised questions about the role of psychology in policy deba...
This article provides an overview of current psychological research on mental health and sexual orientation, as well as clinical practice with sexual minorities. The historical context for current research questions and controversies is described, and the findings of recent empirical research on psychological well-being and distress among nonhetero...
In the United States today, lesbians, gay men, bisexual women, and bisexual men are stigmatized. They are subjected to explicit
and subtle discrimination, marginalized or made virtually invisible by many of society’s institutions, and often vilified.
To understand the health-related experiences and behaviors of sexual minorities, it is necessary to...
Whether and how civil society should recognize committed relationships between same-sex partners has become a prominent, often divisive, policy issue. The present article reviews relevant behavioral and social science research to assess the validity of key factual claims in this debate. The data indicate that same-sex and heterosexual relationships...
This study examined attitudes toward lesbians and gay men in a sample of northern California residents of Mexican descent (N = 616), using 3-item versions of the Attitudes Toward Gay Men (ATG) and Attitudes Toward Lesbians (ATL) scales presented simultaneously in Spanish and English. Males attitudes toward homosexual men were significantly more neg...
Data from an experiment embedded in a national telephone survey of heterosexual, English-speaking U.S. adults (N = 1,283) were used to examine the relationship between manifestations of symbolic stigma and erroneous beliefs about AIDS transmission. Each respondent was presented with three scenarios describing a hypothetical sexual encounter between...
George Weinberg’s introduction of the term homophobia in the late 1960s challenged traditional thinking about homosexuality and helped focus society’s attention on the problem
of antigay prejudice and stigma. This paper briefly describes the history and impact of homophobia. The term’s limitations
are discussed, including its underlying assumption...
Data from a 1999 national telephone survey with a probability sample of English-speaking US adults (N=1,335) were used to assess how support for HIV surveillance policies is related to AIDS stigma and negative attitudes toward groups disproportionately affected by the epidemic. Anonymous reporting of HIV results to the government was supported by a...
This article describes insights into the nature of hate crimes that we gained from personal interviews with gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals. We focus on three questions:
1. What are the varieties of hate crime victimization experienced by sexual minorities?
2. How do victims decide that a crime is based on their sexual orientation?
3. Why do many...
Using interview data from a convenience sample of 450 lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults, the varieties of victim experiences in hate crimes based on sexual orientation are described. Most crimes were perpetrated in public settings by one or more strangers, but victimization also occurred in other locales, and perpetrators included neighbors, cowork...
This paper examines heterosexual adults attitudes toward bisexual men and women using data from a 1999 national RDD survey (N = 1,335). Ratings on 101-point feeling thermometers were lower (less favorable) for bisexual men and bisexual women than for all other groups assessed--including religious, racial, ethnic, and political groups--except inject...
This study assessed the prevalence of AIDS stigma and misinformation about HIV transmission in 1997 and 1999 and examined trends in stigma in the United States during the 1990s.
Telephone surveys with national probability samples of English-speaking adults were conducted in the period 1996 to 1997 (n = 1309) and in 1998 to 1999 (n = 669). Findings...
Using data from a 1999 national RDD survey ( N = 1,335), this article examines gender gaps in heterosexuals' attitudes toward lesbians, gay men, and a variety of topics related to homosexuality. Attitudes toward lesbians differed from attitudes toward gay men in several areas, and significant differences were observed between male and female hetero...
This article provides a brief introduction to social psychological theory and research concerning AIDS-related stigma. After defining stigma and distinguishing it from the related constructs of prejudice and discrimination, the article briefly describes the contours of contemporary AIDS stigma in the United States, using findings from the author's...
Objective: To systematically describe the content of AIDS educational videos targeting gay and bisexual men, and to compare it to the content of videos for heterosexual African American and Latino audiences. Design: AIDS videos targeting gay/bisexual men (n = 35), heterosexual African Americans (n = 14), and heterosexual Latinos (n = 25) were coded...
Objective: To systematically describe the content of AIDS educational videos targeting gay and bisexual men, and to compare it to the content of videos for heterosexual African American and Latino audiences. Design: AIDS videos targeting gay/bisexual men (n = 35), heterosexual African Americans (n = 14), and heterosexual Latinos (n = 25) were coded...
Sexual prejudice refers to negative attitudes toward an individual because of her or his sexual orientation. In this article, the term is used to characterize heterosexuals' negative attitudes toward (a) homosexual behavior, (b) people with a homosexual or bisexual orientation, and (c) communities of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people. Sexual prejud...
Questionnaire data about criminal victimization experiences were collected from 2,259 Sacramento-area lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (N = 1,170 women, 1,089 men). Approximately 1/5 of the women and 1/4 of the men had experienced victimization because of their adult sexual orientation. Hate crimes were less likely than nonbias crimes to have been...
This article explores the question of whether and how heterosexuals' attitudes toward lesbians differ from their attitudes toward gay men. Data from a 1997 national survey are presented to show that heterosexual women generally hold similar attitudes toward gay men and lesbians, whereas heterosexual men are more likely to make distinctions accordin...
Questionnaire data about criminal victimization experiences were collected from 2,259 Sacramento-area lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (N = 1,170 women, 1,089 men). Approximately 1/5 of the women and 1/4 of the men had experienced victimization because of their adult sexual orientation. Hate crimes were less likely than nonbias crimes to have been...
Two experiments were embedded in a 1997 telephone survey of U.S. households to assess possible differences in how heterosexuals think about lesbians versus gay men. In each experiment, one half of the sample first responded to one or more attitude items about lesbians, followed by comparable items about gay men. The other half received the gay male...
This article presents national survey data to assess the extent to which AIDS-related stigma remains linked to public attitudes toward homosexuality in the United States. Most heterosexuals continue to associate AIDS primarily with homosexuality or bisexuality, and this association is correlated with higher levels of sexual prejudice (antigay attit...
This article briefly reviews current knowledge about AIDS-related stigma, defined as prejudice, discounting, discrediting, and discrimination directed at people perceived to have AIDS or HIV, and the individuals, groups, and communities with which they are associated. AIDS stigma has been manifested in discrimination, violence, and personal rejecti...
This article presents national survey data to assess the extent to which AIDS-related stigma remains linked to public attitudes toward homosexuality in the United States. Most heterosexuals continue to associate AIDS primarily with homosexuality or bisexuality, and this association is correlated with higher levels of sexual prejudice (antigay attit...
This article briefly reviews current knowledge about AIDS-related stigma, defined as prejudice, discounting, discrediting, and discrimination directed at people perceived to have AIDS or HIV! and the individuals, groups, and communities with which they are associated AIDS stigma has been manifested in discrimination, violence, and personal rejectio...
Research has indicated that stigmatizing AIDS attitudes are associated with negative attitudes toward gay men. Because injecting drug users (IDUs) are also stigmatized and injecting drug use is an important exposure category for HIV infection, the authors hypothesized that AIDS stigma might also be related to attitudes toward IDUs and that the prop...
The importance of using culturally sensitive educational materials in HIV-related interventions with racial and ethnic minority groups is widely recognized. However, little empirical research has been conducted to assess the relative effectiveness of different techniques for creating culturally sensitive AIDS educational videos. Two field experimen...
To determine whether attitudes toward a stigmatized group are primarily instrumental or symbolic, multiple aspects of AIDS stigma were assessed in a 2-wave telephone survey with a national probability sample of adults (N = 382). Using responses to the Attitude Functions Inventory, respondents were categorized according to the dominant psychological...
Although violence based on sexual orientation is now widely recognized as a serious problem in the United States, social science data concerning the prevalence and consequences of such crimes are limited. In the present study, questionnaire data about victimization experiences were collected from 147 lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (74 females, 73...
Objective: To systematically assess internalized homophobia and its correlates among gay men and lesbians. Design: A measure of internalized homophobia (IHP) was administered to a community sample of lesbians and gay men, along with measures of psychological well-being, outness, and perceptions of community. Results and Conclusions: Women's IHP sco...
This paper examines the relationship between AIDS-related stigma and (a) direct, personal contact with people with AIDS (PWAs), and (b) vicarious contact—through mass media—with a public figure with AIDS or HIV. Data are presented from a 2-wave national telephone survey with a probability sample of US. adults (ns = 538 at Wave 1; 382 at Wave 2) and...
In a two-wave national AIDS telephone survey, a probability sample of English-speaking adults indicated their attitudes toward gay men at Wave 1 (1990-91; n = 538) and toward both gay men and lesbians approximately one year later (n = 382 at Wave 2). At Wave 1, heterosexuals reporting interpersonal contact (31.3%) manifested more positive attitudes...
Heterosexism, an ideological system that refuses, derogates, and labels any nonheterosexual form of identity, behavior, relationship, or community, is one of the emerging issues associated with lesbianism, homosexuality, and heterosexuality whether at individual or cultural levels. This chapter intends to describe and explicate psychological hetero...
Although the direction and intensity of Black heterosexuals’ attitudes toward homosexuality have been topics for considerable speculation, empirical data from representative samples previously have not been available. In the current article we report findings from a two‐wave telephone survey with a national probability sample of 391 Black heterosex...
AIDS educational programs can be effective only to the extent that they are perceived as credible by their target audiences. In this study, public trust associated with AIDS was assessed in a national telephone survey. African-Americans were more likely than whites to express distrust of doctors and scientists concerning HIV transmission through ca...
The association between heterosexuals’ attitudes toward gay men and their interpersonal contact experiences with a lesbian or gay person was examined with data from a national AIDS telephone survey with a probability sample of English‐speaking adults in the United States (n = 937). When asked whether any friends or relatives had “let you know that...
The pervasiveness of stigma in the United States related to the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) was assessed in telephone interviews with a general adult sample (n = 538) and an African-American sample (n = 607). Most respondents manifested at least some stigma. African Americans expressed greater support for policies separating persons w...
Since 1982, the policy of the US Department of Defense has been that homosexuality is incompatible with military service. In January of 1993, however, President Clinton announced his intention to reverse the military's ban and called for discussion about how best to implement a new, nondiscriminatory policy. This article reviews the social science...
College and university communities recently have begun to confront the problems of harassment, discrimination, and violence against lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people on campus. A first step in responding to attacks against gay and bisexual people is to document their frequency and the forms that they take. The present article reports the metho...
The association between heterosexuals' attitudes toward gay men and their interpersonal contact experiences with a lesbian or gay person was examined with data from a national AIDS telephone survey with a probability sample of English-speaking adults in the United States (n = 937). When asked whether any friends or relatives had 'let you know that...
The authors describe various ways that heterosexist bias can occur in scientific research and suggest ways that social and behavioral scientists can avoid it. Heterosexist bias is defined as conceptualizing human experience in strictly heterosexual terms and consequently ignoring, invalidating, or derogating homosexual behaviors and sexual orientat...
This paper offers a preliminary conceptualization of the psychological structure of AIDS‐related attitudes among American adults and describes some of the social and psychological factors that affect those attitudes. Data were collected first from participants in focus groups in five U.S. cities and then from respondents in a national telephone sur...
Lesbian and gay male applicants routinely are denied government security clearances or are subjected to unusually lengthy and intensive investigation. This article reviews social science data relevant to the principal justifications that have been offered for this policy and presents the following conclusions: (a) Lesbians and gay men are no more l...
Lesbian and gay male targets of hate crimes face multiple levels of victimization. In addition to suffering the effects of being a crime victim, they also face secondary victimization (i.e., additional victimization after a crime that results from societal heterosexism). Examples of secondary victimization include losing one's job, being evicted fr...
Documenting the extent of anti-gay hate crimes is of critical importance in responding effectively to them and preventing them. The task of documentation is difficult and time-consuming, but is tremendously valuable if done correctly. Recognizing that the bulk of information about hate crimes currently comes from small-scale community surveys, this...
Empirical studies are urgently needed of the scope and prevalence of anti-gay violence, its mental health consequences, its prevention, and institutional response to it. Researchers should seek data from a variety of sources, use representative samples whenever possible, use reliable and valid measures and methods, and design studies that are longi...
This article describes some of the major psychosocial challenges faced by lesbian and gay male survivors of hate crimes, their significant others, and the gay community as a whole. When an individual is attacked because she or he is perceived to be gay, the negative mental health consequences of victimization converge with those resulting from soci...
Hate crimes against lesbians and gay men occur within a broader cultural context that is permeated by heterosexism. Heterosexism is defined here as an ideological system that denies, denigrates, and stigmatizes any nonheterosexual form of behavior, identity, relationship, or community. It operates principally by rendering homosexuality invisible an...
Lesbian and gay male applicants routinely are denied government security clearances or are subjected to unusually lengthy and intensive investigation. This article reviews social science data relevant to the principal justifications that have been offered for this policy and presents the following conclusions: (a) Lesbians and gay men are no more l...
Peer Reviewed http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/67763/2/10.1177_0022002789033003004.pdf
Antigay hate crimes (words or actions that are intended to harm or intimidate individuals because they are lesbian or gay) constitute a serious national problem. In recent surveys, as many as 92% of lesbians and gay men report that they have been the targets of antigay verbal abuse or threats, and as many as 24% report physical attacks because of t...
The AIDS epidemic has been accompanied by intensely negative public reactions to persons presumed to be infected by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In this article, we define such reactions as AIDS-related stigma. We discuss two major sources of this stigma: the identification of AIDS as a deadly disease and the association of AIDS in the U...
This paper discusses the basis for differences among heterosexuals in their reactions to gay people, with special emphasis on the issue of gender differences. Three studies conducted with students at six different universities revealed a consistent tendency for heterosexual males to express more hostile attitudes than heterosexual females, especial...
This paper argues for the value of a reformulated and reoperationalized functional approach to attitudes. The development of two new procedures for directly assessing functions is described. First, a content analysis procedure was devised, using essays written by undergraduate students describing their attitudes toward lesbians and gay men. Pattern...
This study investigated the hypothesis that high-quality decision-making procedures during crises are associated with better crisis outcomes than are defective decision-making procedures. Presidential decision making during 19 international crises since World War II was examined for seven symptoms of defective decision making proposed by Janis and...
Past research on the relationship between religious orientation and prejudice against out-groups has focussed on racism. greater tendency toward racist attitudes has been found among persons with an external religious orientation, while an intrinsic orientation has sometimes been associated with tolerance. The present study examined the influence o...
This paper proposes that attitudes should be viewed as strategies for meeting personal needs; they serve psychological functions. After reviewing the early functional attitude theories proposed by Katz and by Smith, and some of the problems associated with them, a new functional approach is outlined. This neofunctional approach distinguishes two pr...
This paper reports a series of factor analyses of responses to attitude statements about lesbians and gay men. Using a common factor model with oblique rotation, a bipolar "Condemnation-Tolerance" factor was observed repeatedly in four separate samples of undergraduates. The factor accounts for 35-45% of the total common variance in responses, and...
Homophobia, a term often used to describe hostile reactions to lesbians and gay men, implies a unidimensional construct of attitudes as expressions of irrational fears. This paper argues that a more complex view is needed of the psychology of positive and negative attitudes toward homosexual persons. Based upon a review of previous empirical resear...
Studies of gender role information in television drama focusing on personality and occupational traits provide a description of content which does not take into account the context of interpersonal interaction. Using a relational coding system based on interactional communication theory, the studies reported here investigated the association of pow...
Considers the proposition that to be "a man" in contemporary American society is to be homophobic, that is, to be hostile toward homosexual persons in general and gay men in particular. It is argued that homophobia is an integral component of heterosexual masculinity, to the extent that it serves the psychological function of expressing who one is...
the rubric of "AIDS-related attitudes" includes: (1) attitudes associated with reducing one's own risk for infection or, if already infected, for slowing the disease progression and maintaining the quality of one's life; (2) attitudes toward various strategies for society to prevent HIV transmission and to care for the sick; and (3) attitudes towar...
AIDS-related stigma historically has interfered with effective societal response to the epidemic, and has imposed hardships on people living with HIV, their loved ones, caregivers, and communities. In the United States, concerns about such stigma and its effects on AIDS prevention and treatment led to the institution of public policies specially de...
Citations
... Enacted sexual stigma (ESS) is a type of sexual stigma characterized by overt discriminatory behaviors against lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals [1]. LGB military servicemembers experience disproportionately high rates of victimization due to ESS [2,3]. ...
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... In this study, SOGIE-based harassment (SBH) is defined as verbal and/or physically hostile behaviours intended to cause harm or instil fear in individuals due to their SOGIE (Burn, 2000;D'Augelli et al., 2002;Herek, 1989). Studies on behavioural responses towards SBH have primarily focused on the victim-perpetrator interaction -particularly focusing on the victims' responses. ...
... Of course, feminist identities are not the same as LGBTQ + identities. They carry different weights in people's lives, involve different amounts of actual or perceived agency, and can reflect different ties to people's core selves (Alvarez & Pérez-Peña, 2016;Clair et al., 2005;Herek, 2017;Ryan & Ryan, 2019;Stotzer, 2009). Still, the stigmatized identity framework can be useful for examining feminist identity disclosure without equating different kinds of identities or flattening the varied impacts of oppression tied to their discrimination. ...
... The interactionist approach integrated the essentialist and social constructionist stances, focusing on the common elements between the two. Herek (1994) pointed out that the main assumption of this view is the following: …commonalities exist among cultures in patterns of sexual behavior and attraction: these commonalities have a biological basis to at least some extent. At the same time, the meanings associated with these patterns are acknowledged to vary widely among cultures, and the differences must be understood to recognize which aspects of human sexuality are universal and which are culturally specific. ...
... Sexual minority status (Meyer, 2003), and thus slut-shaming exposure, may also be seen as a risk factor for stigmatisation (Herek, 2016) because individuals who do not conform to gender stereotypes are subject to negative judgements. Even if gender stereotypes affect both male and female individuals, gender discrimination is primarily aimed at women and girls who are still oppressed by old and sexist cultural values (Parent & Moradi, 2010;Zaikman et al., 2016). ...
... Over the past decade, there has been an increase in research focusing on IPV among sexual and gender minorities in the U.S. (Kim & Schmuhl, 2019). Recent data indicate that men who have sex with men (MSM) experience IPV at levels comparable to heterosexual women and higher than men who do not have sex with men Goldberg & Meyer, 2013;Herek & Sims, 2008). Estimates for experiencing IPV in the past year among partnered MSM range from 32% (Houston & McKirnan, 2007) to 54% (Pantalone, Schneider, Valentine, & Simoni, 2012). ...
... A large number of studies exploring people's attitudes towards PLHIV, carried out in the late 1980s -early 1990s, indicated that statements such as "most people with AIDS are responsible for having their illness" and "people with AIDS have gotten what they deserve" were receiving a high score. 1 Since 1996, Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART) drugs have dramatically transformed the medical status of AIDS, from a rapidly and inevitably fatal disease into a chronic condition. The significant biomedical advances have led to the assumption that public attitudes towards PLHIV would be improved. ...
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... Sexual stigma is a pervasive social phenomenon that encompasses a range of negative attitudes and beliefs about same-sex attractions, sexual conduct, and partnerships, as well as those who identify as part of gender and sexuality minority groups (Herek 2015). This stigma, often leading to marginalisation based on sexual orientation and gender identity, detrimentally affects individuals' mental, physical, and socio-economic well-being (Meyer 2003). ...
... Prior research on anti-gay attitudes has already shown that religion and cultural background are prime factors explaining the variations in homophobia across countries (Adamczyk 2017;Adamczyk et al. 2016;Glas and Spierings 2021). Within countries, religiosity, ethnicity, rural areas, and age are most strongly associated with anti-gay attitudes (Coffman et al., 2016;Collins et al., 2023;Herek and Glunt 1993). ...
... It is important to note that gay men are not free from exhibiting heterosexist and homophobic biases. In fact, research suggests that gay men enact aspects of heteromasculinity (Elder et al., 2015), particularly internalizing stigmatization of nonheterosexual identities, relationships, and behaviors (Herek, 1995). One way this manifests is through a preference for traditionally masculine men. ...
