Study: Americans Becoming More Welcoming to Gays, Lesbians

The historic legalization of same-sex marriage in the Unites States last month suggests that the nation has marched towards accepting members of the LGBT community. Now, a new study backs this, showing that more and more Americans have a generally positive attitude towards gays and lesbians.

The study, conducted by University of Virginia researchers from February 6, 2006 until August 10, 2013, revealed that explicit preferences for straight people over lesbians and gays have decreased by 26 percent while the implicit preference for the same have shrunk by 13.4 percent over the seven-year time frame.

It was also determined from the research that Hispanic, White, female, liberal, and young adult participants showed the largest shift in their evaluation while the smallest changes in evaluation occurred among Black, Asian, male, conservative, and older adult participants.

The researchers also noted that in all the demographic groups, race, age, and political views were the biggest predictor of unconscious attitude change while sexual orientation, political views, education, and US residency have a huge effect on the changes in explicit preferences.

Although the evaluation of the study indicated that there is still a large preference for straight people, the study demonstrates the diminishing bias against gays and lesbians as their tolerance and acceptance in the community have seen a strong and substantial growth over time.

The research, which is aimed to identify if the preferences and attitudes to lesbian women and gay men have changed in the given period, involved a total 683,976 participants who answered the Sexuality Implication Association Test (IAT), an online test hosted by Project Implicit.

As reported by New Now Next, the task of the participants involves pairing positive words and images with straight people and negative words and images with gay people then switch to associating positive words to gays and negative to straight people.

The test evaluates the conscious and unconscious attitudes of the participants towards gay and lesbian as participants who have an innate negative connotation towards them will be faster in relating negative words while those who have a more accepting attitude are faster to linking positive words.

"People today are genuinely more positive toward gay and lesbian people than they were just a decade ago," Lead Researcher Erin Westgate said in a report by Psych Central.

"The research shows that attitudes across the board are truly changing - it's not just a function of people feeling less comfortable admitting their bias in a culture that has become more open."