Abstract:
Examining psychologists' beliefs about individuals and groups who are victims of prejudice is a way to enhance these professionals' training when working with this public. The objective of this study was to investigate relations between prejudice and beliefs about the nature sexual and gender diversity among Brazilian psychologists. A total of 497 professionals responded to an online questionnaire. Participants' ages ranged from 22 to 69 years old (M = 34.52; SD = 9.57) and they were associated to 22 out of 23 Regional Psychology Councils. We used the Revised Scale of Prejudice Against Sexual and Gender Diversity to measure prejudice and the Scale of Beliefs About the Nature of Homosexuality to investigate beliefs about homosexuality, which was replicated to investigate beliefs about bisexuality and transsexuality as well. Low rates in extreme prejudice were observed and psychosocial beliefs about sexual and gender diversity were predominant. Psychological beliefs best explained the occurrence of prejudice, represented by the following causal attributions: perversion of normal behavior, unsatisfactory conflict resolution with parental figures, and sexual abuse in childhood. Besides, although showing low size effects, positive correlations were found between the theoretical perspective of psychoanalysis, the modality of psychological assessment and/or psychodiagnosis, and the area of behavioral neuroscience. In view of the population studied, we consider apprehensive that, even with low rates, extreme prejudice scores were above the minimum and, especially, the fact that psychological beliefs best explained the highest scores on extreme prejudice against sexual and gender diversity.
Keywords:
Prejudice; Homophobia; Psychologist Performance; Psychologists