By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm:
What a difference a little bit of time can make. In 1996, same-sex marriage was more likely to be the punchline of a joke than a serious policy position, and support hovered at just 26 percent of the American public. By the time the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell this past June, however, that proportion had increased to a solid 60 percent. Jeremiah Garretson, an assistant professor of political science at Stony Brook University, finds this pretty noteworthy, and is writing a book on rapid attitude change. “There’s been this 40 to 50 point shift in public opinion,” he says. “That’s just not something you usually see.” Even more impressive, it seems to be a true cultural attitude shift. Based on a new study (Westgate, Riskind, & Nosek, 2015) this broad attitudinal transition is reflected in decreases in both conscious and unconscious bias against lesbian women and gay men, and that decrease appears to be occurring across all demographic groups.
By any standard, the study’s results are impressive. With fully 500,000 participating in an online study, the researchers measured expressed attitudes, but also measured unconscious bias. Employing Harvard University’s widely-used Implicit Association Test (IAT), the approach examines the small differences in reaction time when subjects try to pair various social identities (“gay,” “black,” “old,” etc.) with positive or negative words. An implicit bias is revealed when research subjects have a tougher time pairing what they see as a negative identity with a positive word. It may sound like an odd approach, but there is robust evidence showing that it works. Based on that methodology, the recent study found that implicit bias against gays and lesbians was 13 percent lower in 2012 than it was as recently as 2006. That is surprising because implicit biases are viewed as incredibly resilient and very slow to change. So the shift appears to be real and not just a matter of the declining social acceptability of prejudice. “People today are genuinely more positive toward gay and lesbian people than they were just a decade ago,” first author Erin C. Westgate said. “The research shows that attitudes across the board are truly changing — it’s not just a function of people feeling less comfortable admitting their bias in a culture that has become more open.” The research carries both specific lessons for litigators wondering if jurors will be biased against lesbian or gay witnesses or parties, as well as broader lessons for litigators who want to understand the process of attitude change. This post touches on both.
Why the Sudden Shift?
American gays and lesbians who faced decades or generations of discrimination could rightly bristle at that word “sudden.” Indeed, it must feel as though it’s been a long time coming and a hard-won incremental battle. At the same time, at a social science level at least, the speed of the transition was nothing short of remarkable. The shift also seems to be more than just a matter of an “uncommitted middle” drifting from one side to the other. Instead, the change is observed across demographic groups according to recent surveys from the University of Chicago’s NORC Center (2014). While the biggest shifts are predictably among liberals and the young, older Americans, African-Americans and highly religious Americans are also more accepting in recent years. Even the partisan divide is narrowing with 45 percent of Republicans now supporting same-sex marriage.
How did that happen? Well, that question is sure to occupy attitude change researchers in coming decades. In this case, the cause seems to be found in both the media and our daily lives. Interpersonally, gays and lesbians coming out in larger numbers since the 70’s have dramatically increased the chances that we know that some of our neighbors, coworkers, and family members are gay or lesbian, and it is hard to maintain an unquestioned bias in the face of personal exposure. Media exposure has also played a role, with an increasing number of out-and-proud celebrities and characters appearing on our television screens: think Ellen DeGeneres, Will & Grace, Six Feet Under, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and currently, too many to mention.
One theory is that increasing acceptance fueled the growth of these shows and characters, and made public figures more comfortable about coming out. But it is likely that the causal arrow points the other way as well. Edward Schiappa, professor in media studies at MIT, tracked attitude change in a way designed to control for choice in exposure. Instead of just asking those who watch Will & Grace whether they are more accepting of gay individuals (he did, and they are), he also measured baseline attitudes and then randomly assigned half to watch a season of Six Feet Under, an HBO series featuring a lead character who was gay. Sure enough, after watching, students had more positive views of gay men. “At this point, it’s a pretty unequivocal finding that TV can affect how people feel and think about others,” Schiappa noted.
That said, it is likely that no one exposure — media or personal — accounts for dramatic attitude change. Rather it is the accumulation of exposures that help to humanize and normalize the unfamiliar, thus reducing the incidence and the strength of bias.
The Narrow Lesson: A Better Picture for Lesbian and Gay Parties and Witnesses
The specific takeaway is that, where once litigators might have legitimately worried about building credibility for a witness or a party who identifies or who appears as outside the sexual mainstream, now there are reasons to be more optimistic. According to the Westgate study, women, whites, hispanics, liberals and younger Americans are showing the greatest reductions in bias, while men, African-Americans, conservatives, and older people are showing the smallest and slowest changes in attitude. But they are still changing. As we are still in the midst of transition (e.g., witness the conservative reaction to the Supreme Court decision affirming marriage equality), there is the possibility that attitudes are more liberal while also being more polarized: The “anti’s” could have become even more “anti.” Where it matters in your case, find out about those attitudes by asking in voir dire, preferably in a written questionnaire to ensure greater honesty.
The Broader Lesson: The Power of Persuasive Attitude Change
Without a doubt, the historic shift in attitudes toward lesbians and gays is a special case. The fact that the shift occurred based on accumulated personal and media contacts over the course of a few decades makes it a result that cannot be readily duplicated in the context of the short term persuasion you aim for in trial. At the same time, the shift serves as a good reminder to not discount the possibility of attitude change, even on core attitudes. There are some people, even some litigators, who have grown cynical on the possibility of persuasion. We don’t find information in order to decide what to believe, they say, instead we decide what information to find based on what we already believe. That makes attitudes self-reinforcing and unlikely to change. Lawyers who believe that cases are largely decided in jury selection are among those who doubt our capacity for genuine attitude change. But the shift in attitudes toward gays and lesbians shows that change is possible, not just over generations, but within our own recent memory.
The other broad moral of the recent attitude change lies in the power of examples. Our population changed its core attitudes about gays and lesbians over time due to the accumulation of positive examples on our screens and in our lives. Similarly, it is possible for jurors to shift away from more casual attitudes based on positive examples. So don’t just say your client is a good person, show it. Don’t point to corporate defendant’s “statement of values,” show the good work the company does in the community. Don’t just read the employer’s policies, show how they’ve been consistently applied. Knowing that it isn’t always easy to make examples admissible, good trial advocates should always seek relevant evidence that illustrates, humanizes, and makes your abstract themes more concrete. Examples are our reference points.
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Other Posts on Attitude Change:
- Pay Attention to the Pendulum
- Don’t Discount a Motivated Minority
- Convert Your Conspiracy Theorists: Research Shows it Can Be Done
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Erin C. Westgate, Rachel G. Riskind, Brian A. Nosek. Implicit Preferences for Straight People over Lesbian Women and Gay Men Weakened from 2006 to 2013. Collabra, 2015; 1 (1) DOI: 10.1525/collabra.18
Image Credit: CThomas Bower, Flickr Creative Commons