Given the political debate over marriage equality, tonight's LGBT Kos diary is timely, taking a look at why some heterosexuals prefer civil unions to marriage equality from a psychological perspective. In 2007, Michael Schmitt, Justin Lehmiller, and Allison Walsh published the results of a study (link to full-test PDF)looking how marriage equality can pose a threat to heterosexual identity.
The study was based on a famous social psychological theory called Social Identity Theory. Social Identity Theory posits that the individuals have both a personal self (or identity) and a social identity. This distinction is important because protecting and bolstering the social self is as important as bolstering the personal self.
One aspect of the self that defines social self is group membership. Here, groups are broadly defined, including people who share a biological trait (e.g., race, gender) or attitude (e.g., liberals and conservatives). For example, even if you don't belong to a formal organization of men, if you identify yourself as man, you belong to an ingroup of men. This can breakdown into subgroups along many of the defining features of manhood--fathers, sons, husbands, tough men, sensitive men. My point here is that when I say that groups are important to our social identity, these groups aren't limited to the formal organizations that we belong to like the Democratic Party, the Glee Club, or the LGBT Kos Community. Any dimension of yourself that involves a shared trait with others can define a group.
More importantly, because the group is important to your self-esteem, you will engage in behaviors to bolster your group's social standing. There are individual differences in the degree to which group membership is central to our identity. And research shows that those for whom this identity is important are more likely to engage in such behaviors. However, laboratory experiments employing what is known as the minimal group paradigm have shown that individuals show loyalty to fellow members of even nonsense groups created in the lab. In one such study, Tajfel (1970) gave participants a nonsense estimation task and told them they were assigned to one of two groups--overestimators or underestimators--based on their performance on the task. In a later task, participants were given the opportunity to show favoritism to fictitious partners--that they were told the would never meet--on a competitive task, the outcome of which would in no way benefit the participants themselves. Still, they showed significant favoritism to members of their own ingroup when they were competing against an outgroup member.
In addition to showing favoritism to ingroup members, we are also motivated to make our ingroups as distinctive as possible from outgroups. Ingroup members are expected to adhere to norms which maintain the boundaries and sanction those who do not. For example, men tend to punish men who violate traditional male gender role norms. Outgroup members who engage in behaviors associated with the ingroup are similarly punished. For example, assertive men are strong leaders while assertive women are "ball-busting bitches".
What Schmitt and his colleagues argue in this paper is that marriage is an identity-infused institution for heterosexuals. Marriage elevates heterosexual relationships and makes them distinctive from--and superior to--same-sex relationships. Could the reason that heterosexuals tend to support civil unions in greater numbers than marriage equality be related to the centrality of marriage to heterosexual identity? This is the question that the research team sought to answer.
They recruited a sample of 218 exclusively heterosexual participants (112 males; Mage = 19.58; 84.4% White). They were given a measure of sexual prejudice and then asked to read about a new law passed by the state. Half of the participants read this:
Same-sex marriage law
Imagine that the state legislature has passed a new law granting legal recognition of same-sex marriages. This same-sex marriage law will provide to couples in same-sex marriages ALL the rights and benefits provided to couples in heterosexual marriages. Because of the equality provided to same-sex couples, this law is considered very strong. Please carefully read and consider the information below, as you will be asked about it in the following pages.
This was followed by a list of rights and benefits that did not differ across the two conditions. The other half of the participants read this:
Same-sex civil union law
Imagine that the state legislature has passed a new law granting legal recognition of same-sex civil unions. This same-sex civil union law will provide to couples in same-sex civil unions ALL the rights and benefits provided to couples in heterosexual marriages. Because of the equality provided to same-sex couples, this law is considered very strong. Please carefully read and consider the information below, as you will be asked about it in the following pages.
The only difference between the two groups was that one group read about a same-sex marriage law and the other read about a same-sex civil unions law. The description of the law's benefits was identical across the two conditions. Then all of the participants were asked a series of questions measuring how much they supported the law and the degree to which the law threatened heterosexual identity (e.g., 'This law strips heterosexuals of their rightful place in society'), society (e.g., 'This law threatens the very fabric of society'), family values (e.g., 'This law is harmful to families and children'), and the institution of marriage itself (e.g.,'I think this law would strengthen the institution of marriage').
Not unexpectedly the researchers found that participants supported the civil unions law more than the same-sex marriage law. The figure below shows how the participants rated the two laws in terms of the threat that they posed. The blue bars show average ratings from participants who read about the same-sex marriage law while the red bar shows the average ratings from participants who read about the same-sex civil unions law.
Although the blue bars (same-sex marriage) are higher than the red bars (same-sex civil unions) for each of the different threat profiles, the only mathematically meaningful difference found was in the threat to heterosexual identity questions (for the stats dorks: F(1,215) = 6.62, p = 0.011, partial eta2 = 0.03) on the far left side of the figure. The other differences were so small that we cannot say with any confidence that they were was any difference at all.
Next, they did a statistical procedure (for the stats dorks: mediation analysis) that allows them to see if the differences in perceived threat to heterosexual identity mapped onto differences in support for the law. In other words, the procedure would see if the people supported the same-sex civil unions law more than the same-sex marriage law because they found the same-sex civil unions law less threatening to heterosexual identity.
The results of this analysis suggested that concerns that same-sex marriage posed a greater threat to heterosexual identity than same-sex civil unions partially explained the differences in support for the two laws (Stats dorks: direct path--B = -.38, p = .005, indirect path--B = -.24, p = .053, Sobel test--z = 2.38, p = .018).
What does this all mean? It is worth noting that these findings were not affected by sexual prejudice. Low homophobia participants were no less likely to show greater support for civil unions over same-sex marriage than high homophobia participants. The same is true for perceptions of threat. These findings also were not affected by the perception that the same-sex marriage law was stronger than the same-sex civil unions the law. The researchers asked that question and found no differences.
What this basically means is that preference for civil unions to marriage equality is at least partially based on the belief that marriage is a heterosexual institution. This is true for individuals who are high and low in homophobia. And this is not affected by perceptions that marriage equality affords more benefits than civil unions. Although they may claim that their attitudes are based on concerns about family values and the institution of marriage, it's based largely on the idea that marriage makes heterosexual distinct from homosexuals.
One weakness of the study is that the researchers didn't measure religious attitudes, specifically the degree to which the laws conflicted with their religious beliefs. I believe that the combination of religion and heterosexual identity would probably fully explain the tendency to support civil unions over marriage equality.
What do we do about it? This concern is probably not something that lends itself to easy resolution. Heterosexual people with these feelings will probably only be assuaged by seeing over time that marriage equality really doesn't do them any harm. In the meantime, the march to equality continues.
Written by psychodrew