Books by Jeremiah J Garretson, PhD
2018. NYU Press: New York, NY.
Recent Published Peer-Review Articles and Chapters by Jeremiah J Garretson, PhD
The Journal of Politics, 2018
Does learning that homosexuality is innate increase support for gay rights? Because there is a st... more Does learning that homosexuality is innate increase support for gay rights? Because there is a strong correlation between the belief that people are " born gay " and support for gay rights, many assume the former causes the latter. However, correlation does not equal causation. Drawing on data from a US-representative experiment, we examine whether exposure to scientific information on the origins of sexual orientation influences attitudes toward gay people and support for gay rights. The information influenced participants' beliefs about the causes of homosexuality but had no impact on their attitudes. Further, belief change was contingent on ideology—liberals were more persuaded by information that people are born gay, and conservatives by information that people are not born gay. In the contemporary context, shifting causal attributions may not lead to attitude updating; rather, broad political values may act as a cognitive filter, biasing the uptake of new information about sexual orientation. q1
Comparative Political Studies, 2017
Global attitudes involving homosexuality are changing rapidly. Tolerance toward lesbian and gay r... more Global attitudes involving homosexuality are changing rapidly. Tolerance toward lesbian and gay relationships has increased in almost every continent. More often than not, younger people have been at the forefront of this change. In this article, we explore explanations for this cross-national phenomenon. Specifically, we test to see whether contextual factors, those that allow lesbian women and gay men to freely express themselves or to gain cultural representation in the media, have driven this transformation. The results show that inter-cohort effects, or more liberal attitudes among younger people, are related to the pervasiveness of a nation's mass media and to the presence of press freedom. This research suggests a strong link between increasing mass support for minority rights and the factors that encourage and allow minorities to express their viewpoints to others. These findings have broad implications, in that they help us understand the growing global acceptance around gay rights.
LGBTQ Politics: A Critical Reader, 2017
An Overview of Public Opinion Research on Lesbian and Gay Rights
Political Research Quarterly, 2016
In recent decades, scientists have acquired a tremendous amount of knowledge regarding how biolog... more In recent decades, scientists have acquired a tremendous amount of knowledge regarding how biological phenomena—including genes, hormones, and neural structures— influence human characteristics and behaviors. This includes political scientists who have focused on how biology shapes political attitudes and behaviors. In this paper, we connect politics to biology from a different perspective. We ask, " How do biological explanations for human traits and conduct available in the information environment intersect with the public's political opin-ions? " We argue that, generally speaking, biological attri-butions for human difference are highly relevant to ideological debates, which frequently depend heavily on varying beliefs about individual responsibility, blame, and the potential for change in response to intervention. For this reason, the public's biological attributions not only influence their political opinions but are also influenced by their political opinions. We focus in this paper on political opinion associated with biological attributions for homosexuality. 1 We do so for several reasons. First, in the United States, there is considerable interest in the causes of homosexuality, and this topic has received much attention in the American mass media for a number of decades. This ensures not only that we are studying a subject of public interest but also that there will be enough historical public opinion data available with which to study it. Second, scientific beliefs, and accompanying media messages, regarding the causes of homosexuality have changed markedly over the years. The most significant recent change was in the early 1990s, when there was a sudden shift among scientists toward biological explanations for homosexuality. This salient change in elite attributional thinking allows us to assess the impact of a changing information environment on public beliefs and attitudes. 2 Third, social scientists have uncovered strong correlations between what Americans perceive the causes of homosexuality to be and their views on gay rights but have thus far disagreed over the reasons for that correlation. We put forward a set of expectations regarding public responses to changing media messages regarding the causes of homosexuality. We expect that scientists' and the media's shift in the 1990s toward biology to explain homosexuality caused Americans' factual beliefs to shift in accordance but that the change was heterogeneous, with liberals being more likely than conservatives to Abstract In recent decades, Americans' thinking regarding the causes of human behavior has changed considerably. In particular, there has been a swing toward attributing a variety of behaviors to biological factors, and perhaps nowhere is this more evident than for sexual orientation. In this paper, we draw on two overtime survey datasets to argue that new scientific evidence on the biological bases of homosexuality in the 1990s rapidly changed commonly held beliefs. However, because these scientific explanations were perceived to be relevant to gay rights, persuasion tended to be conditioned on citizens' political values. In short, liberals were considerably more likely than conservatives to embrace biological attributions for homosexuality during this period. Furthermore, these changing—and diverging—causal beliefs about homosexuality appear to have contributed to both increasing support for, and left–right disagreements over, gay rights.
Politics, Groups, and Identities, 2015
Sample Current Work by Jeremiah J Garretson, PhD
Why do social or cultural issues see change in collective preferences, but not political or polic... more Why do social or cultural issues see change in collective preferences, but not political or policy issues? Why do young people develop attitudes different then their parents? Why does social change occur in attitudes without regard to political engagement or media consumption?
Papers by Jeremiah J Garretson, PhD
Comparative Political Studies, 2017
Global attitudes involving homosexuality are changing rapidly. Tolerance toward lesbian and gay r... more Global attitudes involving homosexuality are changing rapidly. Tolerance toward lesbian and gay relationships has increased in almost every continent. More often than not, younger people have been at the forefront of this change. In this article, we explore explanations for this cross-national phenomenon. Specifically, we test to see whether contextual factors, those that allow lesbian women and gay men to freely express themselves or to gain cultural representation in the media, have driven this transformation. The results show that inter-cohort effects, or more liberal attitudes among younger people, are related to the pervasiveness of a nation’s mass media and to the presence of press freedom. This research suggests a strong link between increasing mass support for minority rights and the factors that encourage and allow minorities to express their viewpoints to others. These findings have broad implications, in that they help us understand the growing global acceptance around gay rights.
Exposure to the Lives of Lesbians and Gays and the Origin of Young People’s Greater Support for Gay Rights
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Sep 4, 2014
Changing with the Times: The Spillover Effects of Same-Sex Marriage Ballot Measures on Presidential Elections
Political Research Quarterly, 2014
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Books by Jeremiah J Garretson, PhD
Recent Published Peer-Review Articles and Chapters by Jeremiah J Garretson, PhD
Sample Current Work by Jeremiah J Garretson, PhD
Papers by Jeremiah J Garretson, PhD