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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Emotion Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1527124
The Influence of Sexual Prejudice and Gender on Trait and State-Level Empathy
Provisionally accepted- Faculty of Arts, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
A few studies indicate that trait sexual prejudice is negatively related to trait empathy as measured by the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Whether this association persists at the state level and is modulated by gender remains unknown. Participants read vignettes describing gay/lesbian or straight male and female characters in emotional scenarios and rated their state empathy for each character. Women reported more empathy than men and gay/lesbian targets elicited less empathy than straight targets. Empathy was not influenced by target gender. In addition, state empathy positively correlated with trait empathy and both negatively correlated with trait sexual prejudice. Results demonstrate that the negative association between empathy and sexual prejudice persists at the state level. We discuss our findings through the lens of social identity theory and gender roles.describes the metacognitive process of consciously thinking about how others are feeling (Davis,
Keywords: Empathy, Sexual prejudice, gender, sexual orientation, Prejudice
Received: 12 Nov 2024; Accepted: 20 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Winward and Itier. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Seth Bradshaw Winward, Faculty of Arts, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada
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