Affective disgust predicts blame for gay male homicide victims

Abstract

In the case of the State of Minnesota v. Volk (1988), Mr. Volk was charged with murder after fatally shooting Mr. Traetow (Nussbaum, 2004). At his trial, Volk claimed that Traetow made an unwanted sexual advance toward him, and that he was so disgusted by the advance that he momentarily lost control of his actions. Cases like this suggest that disgust can be used as a tool to justify antigay victim-blaming and illustrate how such claims can have negative consequences. Defendants have been successful in using disgust defenses, like those of Volk, to reduce their sentences-but it is unclear precisely why this defense is effective. Here, we examine the role of disgust in shaping victim blame. We chose to focus on gay men for this investigation, given the history of defendants using victim blame to justify violence against this group (a legal defense known as the "gay panic defense"; Chen, 2000). Furthermore, disgust may be particularly relevant when examining violent acts toward gay men. Hate crimes toward sexual minorities, especially gay men, are on the rise according to recent FBI statistics (Hauck, 2019).Past research has demonstrated that disgust is a common reaction by straight people toward gay men, but not necessarily lesbian women (Embrick et al., 2007;Herek, 1988;Kiss et al., 2020;Tapias et al., 2007). Multiple studies have indicated that disgust is associated with heightened anti-gay bias (Inbar et al., 2009), and that increasing disgust can produce prejudice against gay men and reduce support for their civil rights (

Deviant Sexual Stereotyping of Black-White Interracial Couples in the U.S. Underlies Disgust Reactions

“…Further consideration of the extent to which these findings generalize to other cultural contexts and interracial pairings will be a worthwhile future step. It is also worth considering whether deviant sexual stereotyping may account for disgust commonly observed in response to other individuals and couples in the U.S., such as gay men (Quinn et al, 2021;Ray & Parkhill, 2021).…”