Can Induced Awe Reduce Anti-Gay Prejudice in Heterosexual Adults and Does the Need for Closure Moderate this Effect?

With sexual prejudice continuing to be widely prevalent and seriously harmful, there is a need to find ways to reduce anti-gay prejudice (AGP). This online experimental study examined if a novel intervention, induced awe, can reduce AGP; if those high in need for closure (NFC) show higher AGP; and if NFC moderates the effect of awe on AGP. In total, 154 heterosexual adults completed the Need for Closure Scale (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011) before being randomly assigned to one of three emotion inducement interventions – 1) watching a 4.43 min long video of the target emotion, awe, 2) watching the comparison emotion, amusement, or 3) watching a neutral emotion as a control. Post intervention, the participants completed the explicit measures Homosexuality Attitudes Scale (HAS; Kite & Deaux, 1986). Data were analysed using a 2 (NFC) x 3 (emotion type) independent factorial ANOVA. None of the three hypotheses were supported since there were no main effects of awe or NFC on AGP, and no interaction effect of awe and NFC on AGP. Key implications of these results were 1) awe inducement does not change prejudicial attitudes at an explicit level (Dale et al., 2020), 2) factors beyond NFC, like Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), may influence the effectiveness of awe in reducing prejudice, and 3) questions were raised about certain boundaries for awe’s effectiveness. Methodological modifications suggested for future research include using implicit measures or veiled elicitation methods for authentic measurement of AGP, employing more potent awe elicitors, and assessing the mediating role of RWA and SDO on the effect of NFC on AGP.