Abstract
Cultural heterosexist ideologies assume heterosexuality to be the default norm. Four studies investigated when concepts of romantic love are heterosexual-by-default (N=685). In Studies 1-2, participants generated features of romantic love, in general (i.e., the default prototype) or among one of three sexual orientation-specific couples (lesbian, gay, or heterosexual). Heterosexual-identified participants' default prototypes were more similar to heterosexual than same-gender prototypes (Study 1). Lesbian- and gay-identified participants' default prototypes were more similar to both heterosexual and gay male than lesbian prototypes, whereas bisexual-identified participants' sexual orientation-specific prototypes were equivalently similar to the default (Study 2). However, heterosexual-identified participants rated presented features of love similarly across sexual orientation-specific conditions (Study 3). In a timed feature-verification task (Study 4), participants categorized fewer peripheral features of romantic love as relevant to same-gender than mixed-gender couples. Activating sexual orientation-specific representations affected subsequent default concepts of romantic love. We discuss implications for heterosexism theories and intervention.
Highlights
A man and his son were away for a trip
Consistent with the heterosexual-bydefault hypothesis, the default concept of romantic love resembled the concept generated by those thinking about heterosexual couples more than it resembled the concept of
Cultural heterosexism can be internalized by sexual minority individuals, meaning that heterosexual-specific concepts may resemble the default concept even for individuals in these minority groups
Summary
A man and his son were away for a trip. They were driving along the highway when they had a terrible accident. When presented with this ‘surgeon riddle,’ only half of participants correctly guess that the surgeon is the boy’s mother (Reynolds, Garnham, & Oakhill, 2006, see Hegarty, 2017, Studies 3–4 for recent replication). This classic riddle can confuse people, who automatically construct categories as being populated by prototypical members of those categories by default (Bodenhausen & Peery, 2009; Rosch, 1975). We have described how materialist feminism may be used to diffract this seeming impasse between cognitive analysis of concepts and the interdisciplinary demands to queer theory elsewhere
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