Modern Family’s influence on viewers’ explicit attitudes toward same-sex marriage and implicit attitudes toward gay people

Abstract

Previous research found that people who oppose short-term mating orientation and associate homosexuality with promiscuity were most likely to oppose same-sex marriage. This study aimed to test three main hypotheses based on these assumptions and the Parasocial Contact Hypothesis. The Parasocial Contact Hypothesis assumes that prejudices against a social group can be eliminated by a relationship between a media consumer and a fictional personality which embodies a member of that social group on a television show. The tested hypotheses predicted that (H1) the depiction of a loyal gay couple on the television show Modern Family changed people’s explicit beliefs that gay people are promiscuous and, hence, (H2) shifted their explicit attitude toward same-sex marriage from opposing to supporting and (H3) had an impact on their implicit attitudes toward gay people. This study addressed the first two hypotheses in an online survey asking participants to complete a questionnaire. The third hypothesis was tested in a sexuality implicit-association test (IAT) to evaluate potential implicit preferences for straight people compared to gay people. The collected data provided significant support for all three hypotheses. Viewing Modern Family predicted peoples’ beliefs regarding the promiscuity of gay people, peoples’ explicit attitudes toward same-sex marriage, and peoples’ implicit attitudes toward gay people. This study also uncovered unexpected findings. The Viewing Frequency of Modern Family does not linearly predict people’s explicit beliefs that gay people are promiscuous, or their explicit attitude toward same-sex marriage, but instead predicts these in a quadratic manner. Additionally, and unexpectedly, people who have a more favorable attitude towards casual sex were more likely to oppose same-sex marriage, and the stronger the Parasocial Interaction with the characters with Cam, Mitchel, and Jay is, the more likely viewers are to oppose same-sex marriage. Furthermore, this study found evidence that different kinds of information affect implicit versus explicit. In order to better understand the conditions under which circumstances Parasocial Contact is able to reduce prejudice, and what role homophily, viewing frequency, and authority support play, it is important to conduct further research.