Mind: Anti-Gay Attitudes Undeterred by Golden Rule

It seems, on the face of it, a clever retort to conservative Christians who express prejudicial attitudes toward gays and lesbians. Respond by quoting the words of Jesus Christ — specifically, his admonition, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

There's just one problem: According to a new study, such reminders of the golden rule are utterly ineffective at changing minds or hearts. And if you emphasize the universality of this message of tolerance by quoting the leader of a different religion, anti-gay attitudes actually harden.

To begin the experiment, the participants filled in missing words from a series of quotations. For one-third of of the participants, two of the five quotes were variations on the golden rule, which were attributed to Jesus.

Another third were presented with the same golden rule-related quotations, only in their case, the sayings were attributed to the Buddah. The final third filled in words from unrelated quotes.

Their explicit and implicit attitudes toward gay people were then measured in a series of tests. In addition, they reported their political ideology and level of religiosity.

“We predicted that priming the golden rule would decrease negativity toward gay people, especially when it was attributed to the leader of one's own religion,” the researchers write. “Instead, the golden rule priming had no effect when communicated by one's own religious leader.

“However, when the golden rule messages were attributed to the Buddha, Christians self-reported being more explicitly negative toward gay people and more likely to believe that homosexuality is a choice,” they add. “The results suggest that when a tolerant message comes from a religious out-group figure, it does not increase, but may decrease tolerance toward another out-group.”

For more, see Anti-Gay Attitudes Undeterred by Golden Rule by September 13, 2010, Tom Jacobs, at Miller-McCune.