Personal contact with an openly gay person reduces prejudice against the group

Evidence

I attribute this drop to many factors, such as a more sympathetic treatment of homosexuals in the media and more openness among homosexuals. (In Winnipeg, one of the best known city counsellors is openly gay, and he won his seat by an enormous majority in the last election.) To test the coming-out effect, I ran an experiment in 1985 with my own introductory students, in which I (falsely) told half of them I was gay and asked for their anonymous evaluations of me and homosexuals. Compared with those from the other half of my students, who got no such information, my personal ratings dropped some but ratings of homosexuals in general rose (EOF, pp. 226-230). — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3923 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Personal contact with Poles, not abstract pre-judgment, dissolved expellee hostility. — Andrew Demshuk, The Lost German East: Forced Migration…, 1283; Direct personal contact with gay people raises positive attitudes toward homosexuals generally — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3923; Disclosing that a person is homosexual improves others’ attitudes toward homosexuals generally — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3923 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Direct personal contact with gay people raises positive attitudes toward homosexuals generally #corroborates (0.96) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3923
• Decategorized personal contact may fail to change outgroup-wide attitudes #complicates (0.75)