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Genetic Variance in Homophobia: Evidence from Self- and Peer Reports

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Abstract

The present twin study combined self- and peer assessments of twins’ general homophobia targeting gay men in order to replicate previous behavior genetic findings across different rater perspectives and to disentangle self-rater-specific variance from common variance in self- and peer-reported homophobia (i.e., rater-consistent variance). We hypothesized rater-consistent variance in homophobia to be attributable to genetic and nonshared environmental effects, and self-rater-specific variance to be partially accounted for by genetic influences. A sample of 869 twins and 1329 peer raters completed a seven item scale containing cognitive, affective, and discriminatory homophobic tendencies. After correction for age and sex differences, we found most of the genetic contributions (62%) and significant nonshared environmental contributions (16%) to individual differences in self-reports on homophobia to be also reflected in peer-reported homophobia. A significant genetic component, however, was self-report-specific (38%), suggesting that self-assessments alone produce inflated heritability estimates to some degree. Different explanations are discussed.

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Notes

  1. The calculation of standard errors in the context of twin data ignoring the dependence of data within twin pairs may lead to estimates that are either too large or too small (depending on the underlying twin correlation structure) and, hence, to p-values that are lower or larger than warranted. This dependence of twin siblings might distort the results based on the combined sample. Therefore, we additionally ran preliminary analyses based on two subsamples, in which one twin of a pair was randomly assigned. Since the results were not different to those based on the combined sample, we only reported the results for the combined sample and treated each twin as independent individuals.

  2. Although Verweij and colleagues did not specify the homosexual’s sex, it has been previously discussed that people primarily associate gay men when thinking about homosexuality and homosexuals (e.g., Kite and Whitley 1996).

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Funding

This study was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG; Grant Number KA 4088/2-1).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, MSB Medical School Berlin, Calandrellistr. 1-9, 12247, Berlin, Germany

    Alexandra Zapko-Willmes & Christian Kandler

  2. Department of Psychology, Bielefeld University, Bielefeld, Germany

    Alexandra Zapko-Willmes

Authors
  1. Alexandra Zapko-Willmes
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  2. Christian Kandler
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Correspondence to Alexandra Zapko-Willmes.

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Conflict of interest

Alexandra Zapko-Willmes and Christian Kandler declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Edited by Wendy Slutske.

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Zapko-Willmes, A., Kandler, C. Genetic Variance in Homophobia: Evidence from Self- and Peer Reports. Behav Genet 48, 34–43 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-017-9884-9

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