Women’s and Men’s Evaluations of Lesbians and Gay Men and their Levels of Outness

The coming out process is an important component of gay identity development (Troiden 1988) because it allows for an opportunity to overcome feelings of shame and increase self-acceptance (Eliason and Schope 2007). Given the importance of being openly gay (compared to not-openly gay), two experiments were performed. Experiment 1 examined whether heterosexual people’s evaluations of gay individuals are influenced by their outness levels. Experiment 1 recruited 295 U.S. MTurk participants who read a vignette describing either an openly gay or not-openly gay individual. Results illustrate that openly gay targets were evaluated more favorably than not-openly gay targets. Experiment 2 examined whether the reasons justifying the level of outness influence such evaluations. Experiment 2 recruited 492 U.S. MTurk participants who read a vignette describing either an openly gay or not-openly gay individual who provided one of three reasons for their outness level: being true to oneself, honesty in a relationship, and societal prejudice. Results illustrate that the more strongly participants endorsed homonegativity, the less favorably they evaluated openly gay targets. Moreover, female participants perceived societal prejudice and honesty in a relationship as better reasons for outness than being true to oneself. Understanding how levels of outness and reasons for outness can influence evaluations by heterosexual people may help gay people navigate social situations and, perhaps, make informed decisions regarding when it is a safe or possibly unsafe to disclose a gay identity.