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Bias Against Gays And Lesbians On Sharp Decline Since Marriage Equality Legislation

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Americans’ biases against gays and lesbians have been on a rapid decline since 2006 and have continued deteriorating across all demographic groups since the country legalized same-sex marriage, according to a new study published in Collabra.

Studying data gathered from more than half a million people between 2006 and 2013, researchers at the University of Virginia found that people’s attitudes toward gays and lesbians have shifted to be generally more positive over the years.

Related: Record Number Of Americans Support Same-Sex Marriage

"Many people have this gut feeling that our culture has changed. We wondered whether people's attitudes were really changing, or if people today just feel more pressure to say they support lesbian and gay people,” said lead researcher Erin Westgate.

The data shows that over the last decade, unconscious bias against gays and lesbians was down by 13 percent, and explicit bias against gays and lesbians was down by 26 percent.

The research also found that bias decreased most among women, white and Hispanic people, and younger people.

An online test that collected the results, carried out by Project Implicit, gauged the biases of participants by seeing how quickly they’d match negative terminology with gay and lesbian imagery, or match positive terminology with straight imagery.

Psych Central explains:

Participants who have inherent negative associations with gay people will be faster at pairing negative words with gay people and slower at pairing positive words with gay people, whereas participants who are genuinely more accepting will be faster at pairing positive words with gay people and slower at pairing negative words with gay people.

Contributing researcher Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychology professor, said “people may know that they have [implicit biases] and not be able to control them. This is the first evidence for long-term change in people’s implicit attitudes on a cultural level.”

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