Love is heterosexual‐by‐default: Cultural heterosexism in default prototypes of romantic love

Abstract

Cultural heterosexist ideologies assume heterosexuality to be the default norm. Four studies investigated when concepts of romantic love are heterosexual-by-default (N = 685). In Studies 1-2, participants generated features of romantic love, in general (i.e., the default prototype) or among one of three sexual orientation-specific couples (lesbian, gay, or heterosexual). Heterosexual-identified participants' default prototypes were more similar to heterosexual than same-gender prototypes (Study 1). Lesbian-and gay-identified participants' default prototypes were more similar to both heterosexual and gay male than lesbian prototypes, whereas bisexual-identified participants' sexual orientation-specific prototypes were equivalently similar to the default (Study 2). However, heterosexual-identified participants rated presented features of love similarly across sexual orientation-specific conditions (Study 3). In a timed feature-verification task (Study 4), participants categorized fewer peripheral features of romantic love as relevant to same-gender than mixed-gender couples. Activating sexual orientation-specific representations affected subsequent default concepts of romantic love. We discuss implications for heterosexism theories and intervention. A man and his son were away for a trip. They were driving along the highway when they had a terrible accident. The man was killed outright but the son was alive, although badly injured. The son was rushed to the hospital and was to have an emergency operation. On entering the operating theater, the surgeon looked at the boy, and said, 'I can't do this operation. This boy is my son.' When presented with this 'surgeon riddle,' only half of participants correctly guess that the surgeon is the boy's mother (Reynolds, Garnham, & Oakhill, 2006, see Hegarty, 2017, Studies 3-4 for recent replication). This classic riddle can confuse people, who automatically construct categories as being populated by prototypical members of those categories by default (Bodenhausen & Peery, 2009; Rosch, 1975). People often construct concepts in ways that assume certain characteristics (e.g., White, male, heterosexual) that go without saying (Bodenhausen & Peery, 2009; Hegarty, 2017). The surgeon riddle tricks readers who automatically construct a representation of 'the surgeon' as a man in the final This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Prototypicality at the intersection of gender and sexual orientation

“…Research on stereotype content has found that stereotypes about sexual minorities are ‘gender inverted’ (Kite & Deaux, 1987; Klysing et al, 2021; Mize & Manago, 2018), and this experiment provides support that prototypes regarding sexual minority groups follow this same pattern. Furthermore, in line with previous research on representations of bisexuality (Mize & Manago, 2018; Morgenroth et al, 2021), both bisexual women and men were seen as more attracted to men than to women, a pattern which shows that androcentrism is present also in representations of romantic and sexual attraction (see Thorne et al, 2021 for additional discussion).…”

“…both bisexual women and men were seen as more attracted to men than to women, a pattern which shows that androcentrism is present also in representations of romantic and sexual attraction (see Thorne et al, 2021 for additional discussion).…”

Sin mí no soy nada: El efecto moderador de la orientación sexual entre el género y los mitos de amor romántico

“…La H4 se ve confirmada parcialmente. Este resultado coincide con la literatura (Thorne et al 2021), mas al igual que otras hipótesis este tema no ha sido demasiado investigado. Se observa que en el colectivo heterosexual la interiorización de los mitos es significativa únicamente en comparación al colectivo bisexual.…”

“…La presencia de estas ideas ha sido estudiada sobre todo en adolescentes, pues se trata de una etapa que suele ir acompañada de la exploración de las relaciones románticas y, con ello, la construcción de la representación del amor (Bisquert et al, 2019;Masanet y Dhaenens, 2019). Se ha investigado tanto a nivel mundial como en población residente en España (Bisquert et al, 2019;Bonilla y Rivas, 2018;Bosch et al, 2019;Fernández et al, 2021;Masanet y Dhaenens, 2019;Thorne et al, 2021). No obstante, diversos estudios hablan de la vigencia de este discurso en población general (Bonilla y Rivas, 2018), y más concretamente en población adulta (Rodríguez et al, 2013); a pesar de que se reduzca con la edad según algunos/as autores/as .…”

“…Estos resultados muestran que el grado de instauración de la heterosexualidad como norma predeterminada para las relaciones amorosas puede venir influida por la pertenencia a esta orientación sexual (Thorne et al, 2019;Thorne et al, 2021). Como se ha apuntado, el modelo de amor vigente dicta que este ha de ser de una determinada forma.…”