Abstract
Similar to other sexual minorities, asexual individuals often face prejudice and stereotyping. However, the source of these attitudes and beliefs is not well understood. We hypothesized that asexual stereotypes stem from the belief that sexual attraction is an inevitable part of human development. This attraction inevitability assumption can lead to the deduction that people who identify as asexual do so because they are going through a transitory stage or excusing socially avoidant tendencies. To test this stereotype deduction account, we examined whether specific asexual stereotypes (immaturity and non-sociality) were associated with adherence to the attraction inevitability assumption. Heterosexual participants (N = 322; 201 women, 114 men; mean age 34.6 yrs.) from the UK and the US read vignettes describing a target character that was either asexual or heterosexual. People who assumed that attraction is inevitable were more likely to evaluate asexual targets (but not heterosexual targets) as immature and non-social. The impact of the sexual inevitability assumption was present even when social dominance orientation, an attitude closely related to negativity toward all sexual minorities, was accounted for. Participants who adhered to the attraction inevitability assumption also showed a reduced inclination to befriend asexual individuals. These findings suggest that generalized negativity toward sexual minorities does not fully explain stereotypes and prejudice against asexual people. Instead, the current study highlights how perceived deviation from the shared understanding of sexuality uniquely contributes to anti-asexual bias.
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06 July 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02654-y
Notes
Participants were also asked to give their agreement to three statements taken from the Gender Essentialism Scale (Skewes et al., 2018). We did not preregister any prediction relating to gender essentialism and therefore report exploratory tests that include this measure in Supplementary Material.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Gaia Steinberg for their valuable advice during early stages of developing the ideas of this work, to thank Nina Besser Ilan and Michal Morag for their assistance in data coding, and to thank Desiree Maloul for her comments on a previous version of this manuscript.
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This research was partially supported by the Israel Science Foundation, Grant Number 540/20, to N.R.
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Zivony, A., Reggev, N. Beliefs About the Inevitability of Sexual Attraction Predict Stereotypes About Asexuality. Arch Sex Behav 52, 2215–2228 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02616-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02616-4