| dc.description.abstract | Mortality salience (MS) occurs when a person experiences greater access to thoughts of
his/her own eventual death causing fear; it is said that worldview defence structures are activated
in an attempt to alleviate this fear. The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of
mortality salience and viewing one of three sets of images (control, romantic or erotic gay
imagery), on levels of homophobia. Eighty-nine male Lakehead University students were
randomly assigned to one of six conditions (a 2 X 3 factorial design) and completed a
questionnaire package. Neither M S nor image type had significant effects on homophobia
scores. However, the MS manipulation also failed to affect the manipulation check (word
completion task). While the gay images did not affect homophobia, they elicited strong negative
emotional responses, particularly the erotic images, and the responses were strongly correlated
with levels of homophobia. Also, religious fundamentalism and need for cognition were found
to have significant independent relationships to homophobia. | en_US |
