Vecchie e nuove forme di pregiudizio: un contributo allo studio empirico degli atteggiamenti verso l’omosessualità

This study aims to investigate into prejudices towards homosexuals, even referring to traditional studies about it, already consolidated in literature, and which distinguish between implicit and explicit forms of prejudice. On this purpose, after a first exploratory stage and on the basis of existent tools, used before to investigate the ethnic prejudice (Pettigrew e Meertens, 1995; Arcuri e Boca, 1996), we created a questionnaire in three sections apt to measure blatant and subtle prejudice, positive prejudice and the degree of contact with outgroup members, respectively. This instrument has been submitted to 242 university students in their first years and belonging to different faculties. After some factor analysis we succeeded in having a definitive version of a Social Attitudes towards Homosexuality Questionnaire, composed of total 49 items in four scales. Reliability and internal coherence analysis gave satisfactory results. As it comes out of previous studies, it is possible to distinguish people in three prejudice classes. Results confirm the existence of a latent prejudice well distinguished from the blatant one and far more popular and resistant, especially in men and in subjects politically right oriented. We also found out that the existence of a positive prejudice towards homosexuals is prevailing among women. The course of studies is not significant to distinguish subjects with respect to different scales. At last, the degree of contact with outgroup members, generally not very high, relates in a negative way to both forms of negative prejudice, more to the latent one, and in a positive way with positive prejudice.