Threat and Guilt Aspects of Internalized Antilesbian and Gay Prejudice: An Application of Personal Construct Theory
Building on G. A. Kelly’s (1991a, 1991b) personal construct theory, this study introduced concepts of threat and guilt as different manifestations of internalized antilesbian and gay prejudice. Results with 102 lesbian and gay participants indicated that internalized threat and guilt each accounted for unique variance in global internalized antilesbian and gay prejudice. Also, as expected, internalized threat was associated uniquely with lower preference for lesbian or gay sexual orientation, whereas internalized guilt was associated uniquely with lesbian and gay identity denigration. Finally, threat partially mediated the relations of internalized antilesbian and gay prejudice with intrapersonal identity stresses (i.e., identity confusion, difficulty of identity formation process), whereas guilt partially mediated the relations of internalized antilesbian and gay prejudice with interpersonal identity stresses (i.e., maintaining privacy, discomfort with disclosure).