Sex Worker Stigma, Morality and Ambivalent Sexism

Sex worker stigma has received limited attention in psychological research. Although stigma is often theorized to relate to moral concerns, the relationship between stigma and moral concerns has not been empirically established. This study aims to address these gaps by developing a measurement tool for attitudes towards sex workers--specifically an implicit association test (IAT)--and explore the relationships between sex worker stigma, moral concerns, and ambivalent sexism. Mock policy questions on the criminalization and punishment of sex workers were also included to approximate behavioral intentions of participants. A cross-sectional correlational study of 168 community members found evidence that both moral concerns and sexism were associated with implicit and explicit attitudes toward sex workers. The newly developed Sex Worker IAT correlated with all explicit measures of attitudes toward sex workers, evidencing convergent validity, while also demonstrating a negative bias toward sex workers more strongly than the explicit measures, supporting discriminant validity. Together, the zero-order correlations suggest the construct validity of the Sex Worker IAT in measuring implicit attitudes toward sex workers. The purity/sanctity Moral Foundations dyad consistently emerged as the strongest unique predictor of both implicit and explicit attitudes toward sex workers, outperforming other moral foundations as well as measures of sexism. Hostile sexism predicted only explicit attitudes toward sex workers, suggesting that morals may be more closely related to implicit reasoning than explicit attitudes. The purity/sanctity, authority/respect, and harm/care foundations were predictive of policy choices, as well as benevolent sexism. This study not only establishes a valid measure of implicit sex worker attitudes, but also adds to the limited research linking moral concerns and stigma. Despite the highly politically liberal sample, this study demonstrated the prevalence of negative attitudes toward sex workers. Future work should validate the Sex Worker IAT with a larger and more diverse sample, as well as assess the impacts of intersectionality on the stigmatization of sex workers.