Attractive people more likely to be accepting of gay sex, study suggests
Turns out homophobia really is ugly.
By Will Stroude
We all know that homophobia is ugly, but it turns out it could be an indication of more than just a rotten personality.
According to a recent study published in Social Science Quarterly, attractive people are more likely to be accepting of gay sex compared to their, erm, less facially-gifted counterparts.
Social policy reasearchers at Iowa State University used responses from the 2016 General Social Survey and the 1972 National Election Study to compare the views of respondents on a range of ‘moral’ issues including abortion rights, gay sex and marriage equality.
Those two studies were notable for including evaluations by the interveiwer of respondents’ physical attractiveness, and researchers found that those deemed more conventially ‘attractive’ were more likely to hold “permissive” attitudes when answering questions on sexual issues.
When it comes to issues unrelated to sex, such as marijuana legalisation however, there was no difference between the two groups.
Robert Urbatsch of Iowa State University speculated that ‘attractive’ people may have more permissive attitudes towards sex because they are likely to have increased opportunities for sexual activity, which in turn reduces the sense of “stigma” surrounding that activity.
“These results support the hypothesis that greater opportunity to indulge in a behavior — as good looks typically provide for sexual activities — reduces the sense of moral stigma surrounding that activity,” Urbatsch said.
We’re taking all this with a pinch of salt, of course, but perhaps that old adage that homophobes are secretly gay is wrong – maybe it’s just because they’re not getting laid at all…