The Moderating Role of Socially Desirable Responding in the Relationship Between Gay Men’s Implicit and Explicit Internalised Sexual Prejudice

Internalised sexual prejudice (ISP) occurs when sexual minority individuals adopt negative societal attitudes about their own sexuality. ISP research commonly relies on self-report instruments, which captures explicit ISP but fails to assess the automatic aspects of implicit ISP. In addition, emerging research suggests that ISP can be self-directed (i.e., negative attitudes towards oneself as non-heterosexual) or group-directed (i.e., negative attitudes towards other LGB individuals). The present study utilised explicit and implicit measures to evalute the self-directed and group-directed components of ISP, and explored the moderating role of socially desirable responding, including impression management ([IM]; i.e., deliberate response modification) and self-deceptive enhancement ([SDE]; i.e., unintentional positive self-bias). The analysis of data from 244 gay men ( M = 38.40 years, SD = 13.50) revealed that implicit ISP was more negative than explicit ISP. Bivariate correlations showed that IM and SDE were negatively correlated with explicit group-directed ISP but were unrelated to explicit self-directed ISP and implicit ISP. Moreover, SDE moderated the relationship between implicit and explicit group-directed ISP, such that higher SDE scores weakened the implicit-explicit correspondence.