Attitudes Toward Homosexuality Among Brazilian and Canadian College Students

Summary This study was a cross-cultural extension of previous research concerning the relationship between attitudes toward homosexuality, attitudes toward heterosexual sexual practices, personal sex-guilt, and sex stereotyping. One hundred twelve Brazilian male college students completed a series of attitude measures previously administered to a comparable sample of Canadians. As had been previously found in Canada, antihomosexual (Anti-H) Ss were more disapproving of various heterosexual sexual practices and reported greater personal sex-guilt than prohomosexual (Pro-H) Ss. The intercorrelations among the three principle attitude scales were only moderately positive in both samples, suggesting that attitudes toward homosexuality are somewhat independent of more general sexual attitudes. Anti-H Ss also stereotyped the sexes more than did Pro-H respondents and were more willing than Pro-H Ss to label a male as homosexual when he exhibited what they thought was a single feminine characteristic. In these respects the Brazilian and Canadian results were strikingly similar. More antihomosexual prejudice was found in the Brazilians. They also assigned much higher probabilities to a “feminine” male being homosexual than did Canadian Ss. The findings of this study provide potent cross-cultural confirmation of Churchill's theory of antihomosexual prejudice within a sex-negative environment.