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Graduate Student Journal of Psychology
Spring 2024 - Vol. 22

Copyright 2024 by the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology
Teachers College, Columbia University

Can Induced Awe Reduce Anti-Gay Prejudice in 
Heterosexual Adults and Does the Need for Closure 

Moderate this Effect?
Pankaj Gupta & Iain Hamlin

School of Psychology, College of Health, Psychology, and Social Care, University of Derby

 Despite decades of struggle, prejudice based on 
sexual orientation continues to be commonplace (Bar-
tos et al., 2014; Pirlott & Cook, 2018). Homosexual 
people face rejection at three levels– the socio-political 
level (heterosexism), the cultural level (sexual stigma) 
and the individual level (anti-gay prejudice (AGP) or 
sexual prejudice; Herek, 2007). On a socio-political 
level, as of December 2020, 70 countries worldwide 
still criminalised homosexuality and in 11 of those 
countries, homosexual behaviour could warrant a 
death penalty (International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, 
Trans, and Intersex Association, 2020). On a cultur-
al level, a major contributor to stigmatization of ho-
mosexuality has been the ‘scientific’ rationalization 
given by the Psychology and Psychiatry disciplines 
for treating homosexuality as a mental disorder (Dre-
scher, 2015). The American Psychiatric Association 
(1987) completely removed homosexuality as a mental 
disorder as late as 1987, in its revised third edition of 
the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Dis-
orders, and the World Health Organisation (1990) 
removed homosexuality from its International Clas-
sification of Diseases in 1990. On an interpersonal 
level, homosexuals continue to battle various forms of 
harmful prejudicial behaviors like verbal harassment, 
physical assault, sexual assault, social avoidance, and 
social distancing (Huebner et al., 2004). Sexual prej-
udice was the cause for 17% of hate crimes commit-

ted in 2019 in the United States (Federal Bureau of 
Investigation, 2019). Despite the ethical obligation 
that the discipline of Psychology has, to find effective 
ways of reducing  sexual prejudice, this field of research 
continues to be very small (Case & Stewart, 2010).
Interventions to Reduce Anti-gay Prejudice
 According to a meta-analytic review of interven-
tions to reduce sexual prejudice (Bartos et al., 2014), 
only education and contact with gay people have 
shown a reasonable medium sized effect. Education is 
a rational confrontational intervention that can some-
times work and sometimes backfire (Cramwinckel et 
al., 2021) because prejudice has underlying emotions 
that are often resistant to rational argument (Dovidio 
et al., 2004) and those who identify strongly with their 
ingroup are likely to feel that their ingroup is being 
made to look guilty with the educational intervention 
and to respond with increased hostility towards the 
outgroup (Doosje et al., 1998). The general findings 
of intergroup contact research are more promising 
(Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000; 2008). However,  many 
psychologists (e.g., McKeown & Dixon, 2017; Vezzali 
& Stathi, 2020) caution against its real-world applica-
bility because the idealized interactions that psycholo-
gists study are very different from actual interactions 
in real‐life settings (Paluck & Green, 2009). Other 
limitations of intergroup contact interventions are: 
1) the effects of contact vary significantly across dif-

With sexual prejudice continuing to be widely prevalent and seriously harmful, there is a need to find ways to reduce 
anti-gay prejudice (AGP). This online experimental study examined if a novel intervention, induced awe, can reduce 
AGP; if those high in need for closure (NFC) show higher AGP; and if NFC moderates the effect of awe on AGP. 
In total, 154 heterosexual adults completed the Need for Closure Scale (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011) before being ran-
domly assigned to one of three emotion inducement interventions – 1) watching a 4.43 min long video of the target 
emotion, awe, 2) watching the comparison emotion, amusement, or 3) watching a neutral emotion as a control. Post 
intervention, the participants completed the explicit measures Homosexuality Attitudes Scale (HAS; Kite & Deaux, 
1986). Data were analysed using a 2 (NFC) x 3 (emotion type) independent factorial ANOVA. None of the three 
hypotheses were supported since there were no main effects of awe or NFC on AGP, and no interaction effect of awe 
and NFC on AGP. Key implications of these results were 1) awe inducement does not change prejudicial attitudes 
at an explicit level (Dale et al., 2020), 2) factors beyond NFC, like Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA)and Social 
Dominance Orientation (SDO), may influence the effectiveness of awe in reducing prejudice, and 3) questions were 
raised about certain boundaries for awe’s effectiveness. Methodological modifications suggested for future research 
include using implicit measures or veiled elicitation methods for authentic measurement of AGP, employing more 
potent awe elicitors, and assessing the mediating role of RWA and SDO on the effect of NFC on AGP. 
 Keywords: anti-gay prejudice, induced awe, need for closure, Need for Closure Scale, Homosexuality Attitudes   
 Scale, sexual prejudice



64

ferent types of contact - positive or negative (Vezzali 
& Stathi, 2020); 2) such effects lack generalizability, 
since most studies have been done with people under 
the age of 25 and the effects of contact are not mea-
sured for longer than a day (Paluck and Green, 2009); 
and, 3) the model hopes to psychologically rehabil-
itate dominant bigots (McKeown & Dixon, 2017). 
 Allport’s (1954) intergroup contact hypothesis, 
said that four conditions must be met for intergroup 
contact to effectively reduce prejudice: equal status, 
common goals, intergroup cooperation and support of 
authorities, and laws and customs. While many subse-
quent studies have shown that even when all four of the 
conditions are not met there is still a reduction in preju-
dice seen (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2000), many critics have 
shown that in real life, intergroup contact can increase 
prejudice instead of decreasing it (McKeown & Dixon, 
2017; Graf et al., 2014). Another less researched prej-
udice reducing intervention is elicitation of emotions 
like empathy toward a discriminated group (Paluck & 
Green, 2009). However, its effect on reducing sexual 
prejudicial attitudes has only shown modest results 
(Bartos et al., 2014). There is a need for psychologists 
to test other forms of interventions for reducing AGP.
Awe
 Awe is an emotional response to exceptionally 
vast stimuli and events, like the beauty and vastness 
of nature, certain forms of art, ability, perfection, 
and supernatural events, that defies one’s accustomed 
frame of reference in some domain, transcends one’s 
current understanding (Shiota et al., 2007), and re-
quires an accommodation/adjustment to existing 
mental structures (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Awe is a 
unique emotion that has shown widespread effects 
on increasing an individual’s prosocial behavior (Piff 
et al., 2015), as well as on reducing conviction about 
one’s ideological attitudes (Stancato & Keltner, 2021). 
Experience of positive awe has two kinds of effects. 
One type is where awe changes the patterns of social-
ity with reduced focus on self and increased feeling of 
being small or insignificant (Bai et al., 2017; Stellar et 
al., 2018), thereby leading us to see ourselves as a small 
part of a greater whole, more connected to humanity, 
including out-group members (Shiota et al., 2007). 
 The second type of effect of awe relates to how 
its experience is cognitively destabilizing and trig-
gers the need for accommodation (Rudd et al. 2012;   
Valdesolo et al., 2016). Experiencing awe-inspiring 

phenomena involves challenging one’s current men-
tal structures (Keltner & Haidt, 2003), and searching 
for new knowledge structures to make sense of new 
experiences, leading to schema change (Shiota et al., 
2007). Although Dale et al. (2020) did not find sup-
port for a schema change with regard to negative ra-
cial attitudes toward African Americans, Stancato and 
Keltner (2021), across three experimental studies, did 
find robust support for it as a result of experiencing 
induced awe. Stancato and Keltner (2021) tested the 
effects of experimentally induced awe on reducing 
conviction about one’s ideological attitudes relat-
ed to racism and found that induced awe led to un-
certainty and ambivalence regarding one’s attitudes 
towards ideologically opponent outgroups and that 
in turn promoted reduced dogmatism and increased 
perceptions of social cohesion. There are many theo-
retical positions (for example Allport, 1954; Adorno 
et al., 1950; Sidanius et al., 2004), that suggest that 
many kinds of prejudice, like racism, sexism, and sex-
ual prejudice, share similar characteristics (Aosved 
et al., 2009). So, theoretically if inducing awe can 
reduce racially prejudicial attitudes, it should be ef-
fective in reducing sexually prejudicial attitudes as 
well. However, no one has tested this effect yet. This 
study’s first objective was to test the effect of inducing 
awe on the reduction of AGP in heterosexual adults. 
Need for Closure
 In his seminal work ‘The Nature of Prejudice’, 
Allport (1954) theorized that individuals with a prej-
udice-prone personality think of anything and ev-
erything in a prejudicial way. They have a motivated 
general way of thinking, that does not discriminate be-
tween different outgroups and holds prejudice against 
all kinds of targeted groups. A more contemporary the-
ory that also supports Allport’s (1954) theory of prej-
udiced personality is the need for closure (NFC) theo-
ry posited by Kruglanski and Webster (1996; also see 
Kruglanski & Fishman, 2009) which explains the indi-
vidual differences behind prejudicial thinking. There-
fore, NFC is a cognitive style that predicts prejudicial 
attitudes (Onraet et al., 2011; Roets & Van Hiel, 2011). 
 NFC has been defined as the desire for "an answer 
on a given topic, any answer, compared to confusion 
and ambiguity" (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994, p. 1049) 
with two underlying tendencies – seizing (seeking 
quick and definite answers sourced through easily ac-
cessible information) and freezing (freezing upon those 

GUPTA & HAMLIN



65

CAN INDUCED AWE REDUCE ANTI-GAY PREJUDICE?

lending credence to the idea that NFC’s effects on ra-
cial prejudice and sexual prejudice would be similar. 
 One evolutionary function of awe is to generate 
a need for accommodation and updating of current 
mental frameworks, and to make sense of new infor-
mation that cannot be assimilated in current mental 
structures (Griskevicius et al., 2010) – needs people are 
generally motivated to satisfy (Fiedler, 2001). The oth-
er function of awe is to increase the prosocial tenden-
cies in people via a sense of ‘small self’ - seeing oneself 
as less important in the grand scheme of things (Piff et 
al., 2015). When faced with situations and people that 
defy conventions and norms, like homosexuals, people 
with high NFC (vs. low NFC) have a greater and more 
urgent need for cognitive accommodation (Dhont et 
al., 2011; Van Hiel & Mervielde, 2002). Since awe is 
known to increase prosocial tendencies, we expected 
the experience of awe to help resolve this heightened 
need for accommodation in favour of reduced anti-gay 
bias. Although dispositional tendencies to experience 
awe are negatively associated with NFC (Shiota et al., 
2007), awe can be induced in individuals who are or 
aren’t predisposed to experiencing it, and its effects 
can last up to a week or longer after the experience 
(Anderson et al., 2018; Takano & Nomura, 2020). 
 By combining findings from the awe, NFC, and sex-
ual prejudice literatures, we expected that NFC would 
play a moderating role in the effect of awe on AGP, in 
such a way that people high in NFC would respond to 
experience of awe with a greater reduction in AGP. To 
overcome prior study limitations of most studies be-
ing correlational, conducted in the United States and 
among college students, this study was designed to be 
experimental, conducted among heterosexual adults in 
the age range of 18 to 87 years, with participants from 
many countries (including the United Kingdom, Can-
ada, United States, Europe, and India). This study’s 
aim was to explore a new line of research related to 
the use of a novel emotional stimulus, awe, to reduce 
AGP, especially among high NFC/prejudice-prone 
people, which has not been conducted to date.
Hypotheses 

H1: People who have awe elicited within 
them will report a larger decrease in anti-gay 
prejudice than people who experience amuse-
ment or neutral emotion.
H2: People high in need for closure will show 
higher anti-gay prejudice than people low in 

answers and guarding them against any contradictory 
information). Individuals high in dispositional NFC 
desire order and structure in their lives, predictable 
knowledge that is stable across circumstances, and swift 
and firm decisions. They are uncomfortable with am-
biguity and are closed-minded, unwilling to have their 
knowledge challenged (Webster & Kruglanski, 1994). 
 NFC theory explains why people with high dis-
positional NFC experience discomfort with situations 
and people that seem to deviate from expectations and 
norms, and therefore hold negative attitudes toward a 
wide variety of marginalized groups (Roets & Van Hiel, 
2011), including homosexuals (Soenens et al., 2005). 
In three Belgian studies, Van Hiel et al. (2004) found 
support for a structural equation model in which NFC 
had a positive effect on racism which was fully mediat-
ed by Right Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) but only 
partially by Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). 
Similarly, Baldner and Pierro (2019) found a signifi-
cant positive correlation between NFC and prejudice 
against immigrants in Italy and in the United States. So-
enens et al. (2005) conducted a study in Belgium with 
393 psychology students, examining the relationship 
between different identity styles and measures of con-
servatism, and racial and sexual prejudice. As a part of 
that study, they found that NFC positively correlated 
with other measures of conservatism (RWA and SDO) 
and prejudice (racism and anti-gay prejudice). The sec-
ond objective of this study was to find support for the 
idea that individuals high in NFC display higher AGP. 
Moderating Role of NFC on the Effect of Awe on 
Anti-gay Prejudice
 While Allport (1954) posited that prejudice re-
ducing interventions, like intergroup contact, don’t 
work on prejudice-prone personalities because of the 
rigidity of their attitudes, contemporary researchers 
(Dhont et al., 2011; Hodson, 2008) found evidence 
to the contrary. Dhont et al. (2011) conducted a se-
ries of five studies among Flemish Belgian students 
and adults testing if NFC moderates the relation 
between intergroup contact and prejudice toward 
Muslim immigrants. The results consistently showed 
that intergroup contact was more strongly associ-
ated with reduced levels of racial prejudice among 
people high in NFC compared to people low in 
NFC. Aosved et al. (2009) found strong correlation 
between the constructs of racism, sexual prejudice, 
sexism, ageism, classism, and religious intolerance, 



66

GUPTA & HAMLIN

need for closure. 
H3: There will be an interactive effect of 
induced emotion and need for closure on 
anti-gay prejudice, such that the relatively 
beneficial effects of awe induction (relative to 
amusement and neutral emotion induction) 
on anti-gay prejudice should be greater for 
those high in need for closure than those low 
in need for closure.

Method
Design
 This was an online experimental study with data 
collected via Qualtrics. This experimental study had 
an independent measures 2 x 3 factorial design. IV1 
‘emotion type’ was a three level, between-subjects fac-
tor where awe, amusement, and neutral emotion types 
were induced by using three different 4.43-minute-long 
video stimuli. IV2 ‘NFC’ was a measured factor, split at 
the time of analysis into two levels – high NFC (above 
median) and low NFC (below median). The DV was 
the anti-gay prejudice score. Overall, we aimed to exam-
ine 1) the effects of a 4.43 min. awe video (vs. 4.43 min. 
‘amusement video’ – a comparison positive emotion, 
and a 4.43 min. ‘neutral emotion’ video – as control) 
on AGP, 2) the effect of NFC on AGP, 3) the interac-
tion effect of induced emotion type and NFC on AGP. 
Participants 
 The G*Power estimate for the number of partici-
pants required for this study was 158 (Power 0.8, effect 
size 0.25, Alpha error probability 0.05). A total of 159 
self-identified heterosexual adults were recruited for 
this online study – 90 (57%) through Survey Circle 
(a research participant recruitment website), 57 (36%) 
through social media platforms (Facebook, LinkedIn, 
and WhatsApp groups of family and friends), and 
12 (7%) though the Research Participation Scheme 
(RPS) and the MSc. Psychology student community 
at University of Derby. Participants recruited through 
Survey Circle and RPS received points for participat-
ing in this study, which counted towards their research 
credit. No other participants received any incentives. 
Individuals who were not fluent in English, were <18 
years of age, or did not self-identify as heterosexual 
were excluded from this study. Five outlier cases, with 
z-scores higher than +/- 2.58, were removed from the 
analysis to improve the conditions of normality in the 
data set. Remaining participants (n = 154) ranged in 

age from 18 to 87 (M = 35, SD = 14.5) and 71% were 
female and 29% were male. The participant data had a 
strong skew towards younger age groups with modal 
age of 23 years and 50% of respondents being under 30 
years of age. The sample was geographically heteroge-
neous, having 50 (32.5%) respondents from the Unit-
ed Kingdom, 42 (27.3%) from India, 21 (13.6%) from 
Canada, 16 (10.4%) from Europe, 13 (8.4%) from the 
United States, and 12 (7.8%) from other countries.
Materials
 The materials used in this study were a Qual-
trics account to host the survey, SPSS to conduct 
the planned analysis and Student OneDrive to store 
the participant data. The experiment stimuli used 
were three previously validated videos, all related to 
nature, and all edited to the same duration of 4.43 
min. Awe video stimulus https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=RUp_P2g8sAc previously used by Piff et al. 
(2015), consisted of nature clips from the BBC’s Plan-
et Earth series with grand, awe-inspiring shots of scenic 
vistas, mountains, plains, forests, and canyons. Amuse-
ment video stimulus https://youtu.be/osQoYz2cIGU, 
captured amusing moments from the daily life of 
Antarctic penguins, and had been previously used by 
Yichao et al. (2021). The neutral emotion type video 
stimulus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YFK-
djtLozc, was a short documentary about goby fish, 
previously validated and used by Valdesolo et al. (2016) 
and found to be devoid of strong emotional responses. 
Measures
 NFC was measured with the 15-item short ver-
sion (Roets & Van Hiel, 2011) of the NFC scale 
(Webster & Kruglanski, 1994; revised by Roets & 
Van Hiel, 2007). Sample items included “I don’t like 
to go into a situation without knowing what I can 
expect from it” and “I would quickly become impa-
tient and irritated if I would not find a solution to a 
problem immediately.” Respondents completed the 
items on a 6-point scale from 1 (completely disagree) 
to 6 (completely agree), and responses across items 
were averaged such that higher scores would indicate 
higher levels of NFC. This study obtained a Cron-
bach’s alpha of .84. For this version of the NFC scale, 
Roets and Van Hiel (2011) obtained Cronbach’s al-
pha of .87, demonstrating good internal consistency. 
 Homosexuality Attitudes Scale (HAS; Kite & 
Deaux, 1986) consists of 21 items assessing people’s 
stereotypes, misconceptions, and anxieties about 



67

homosexuals. Sample items include “Homosexuals 
should be forced to have psychological treatment” 
and “If I were a parent, I could accept my son or 
daughter being gay”. Respondents rate each item on 
a 5-point Likert scale ranging from ‘strongly agree’ 
to ‘strongly disagree’. The scale provides a unidi-
mensional factor representing attitudes toward gay 
individuals and reported high internal consistency (α 
>.93) and good test-retest reliability (r = .71). Cron-
bach’s alpha for this study was .95. A higher  score 
on HAS represents a more favourable evaluation of 
homosexuals. The HAS has previously been utilized 
as a measurement to assess beliefs about homosex-
uals in several studies, for example, Keiller (2010).
Procedure 
 This study was approved by the ethics review 
panel at the University of Derby. Subsequently, par-
ticipants were recruited using a variety of methods 
including Survey Circle, social media and Univer-
sity of Derby student platforms (details in Partic-
ipants section above). The study was posted on 
these platforms using the Participant Invitation, 
which included the digital URL and QR code for 
the Qualtrics webpage where the study was hosted.
Those interested in taking part in the study were invit-
ed to click on the URL or scan the QR code to access 
the virtual Participant Information Sheet which pro-
vided the details about the research aims and overview, 
and what they would be required to do if they decided 
to participate in the study. The Participant Informa-
tion Sheet also stated that participation in the study 
was completely voluntary, anonymized, that there was 
an option to ‘opt out’ of the study anytime during or 
up to two weeks after their participation in the study, 
prior to the data analysis taking place, and that partici-
pants would be provided with a unique identifier code 
in order to withdraw. There was no reward or mon-
etary benefit for participation, except those recruited 
via the RPS and Survey Circle who received points in 
the respective research participation schemes. There 
were no attempts to deceive the participants. Partic-
ipants were informed of the approximate length of 
the study (15-20 minutes). This was followed by the 
GDPR regulations and Privacy notice. Once the can-
didates had thoroughly read the information sheet 
and the Privacy notice, they were asked to provide 
their consent in an Informed Consent Form. The 
consent form had a box the participant had to tick be-

fore continuing, confirming their informed consent. 
 Participants were then directed to the next sec-
tion asking the following demographics – age, gen-
der, and country of residence. After completing the 
demographic section, they were directed to the first 
task which was responding to the NFC short version 
scale. Upon completion of this task, using Qualtrics 
randomizer, they were randomly allocated to one of 
three groups – awe/amusement/neutral – and were 
asked to view the corresponding 4.43-minute-long 
emotion eliciting stimuli video. Participants were 
not able to fast forward or speed up the video at any 
stage and needed to watch the video in full at reg-
ular speed. After participants finished viewing the 
emotion eliciting stimulus video they were asked to 
report the intensity of their current emotions out 
of 14 options - “fear,” “anger,” “sadness,” “pride,” 
“awe,” “peacefulness,” “excitement,” “happiness,” 
“boredom,” “anxiety,” “love,” “surprise,” “amuse-
ment,” and “disgust” (1 = not at all; 7 = extremely). 
This emotional manipulation check has been previ-
ously used by Piff et al. (2015) and Rudd et al. (2012). 
 The last task for the participants was to respond to 
the HAS measuring their attitudes toward homosexual 
individuals. HAS was administered only once, after the 
experimental intervention, in line with previous stud-
ies using experimental manipulation of awe, for exam-
ple, Stellar et al. (2018), and Yichao et al. (2021). Once 
the final task was completed, all participants were tak-
en to the Debrief page and provided reconsent to their 
data being used by the research team, which concluded 
their participation in the study. The debrief informed 
them of the next steps in the study, clearly stating till 
which point they could withdraw. To do this, partici-
pants were going to be asked to provide their unique 
identification code and state to the researchers that 
they are no longer interested in participating in the 
study. They were also informed that upon request they 
will be able to access the final research paper if desired. 
Lastly, contact details of the researchers were provid-
ed to welcome the opportunity to ask any questions.
Analytic Strategy 
 Data imported from Qualtrics study were an-
alyzed using SPSS. Outliers (z-scores greater than 
+/- 2.58) were removed. Before conducting a 2 x 3 
factorial ANOVA, the data from remaining partici-
pants were checked for parametric assumptions. The 
dependent variable (AGP) data were at interval level. 

CAN INDUCED AWE REDUCE ANTI-GAY PREJUDICE?



68

GUPTA & HAMLIN

Since there were many groups in the 2 x 3 design of 
this study, and because normality of residuals rather 
than normality of variables is important in ANOVA 
(Kozak & Piepho, 2018), the residuals for AGP were 
examined for normality, which showed a deviation 
from normality. Subsequently, a Log 10 transforma-
tion was done on the AGP reflected data, and their 
residuals showed a normal distribution. Normality 
was also checked after splitting the data into each of 
the six (2 NFC levels x 3 Emotion types) IV combi-
nations, each of which also showed a normal distri-
bution. Homogeneity of variance was checked with 
a Levene’s test. A 2 (NFC level) x 3 (Emotion type) 
factorial independent measures ANOVA was then 
conducted. Apart from the main analysis, a manipu-
lation check was done to find if the awe stimulus gen-
erated higher mean levels of awe emotion as compared 
to the amusement stimulus and the neutral emotion 
stimulus, by conducting a one-way ANOVA. Nor-
mality and homogeneity of variance assumptions were 
checked before conducting the one-way ANOVA.

Results
 Five univariate outlier cases with z-scores greater 
than +/- 2.58 were removed from the initial data set of 
159 participants – with 3 from AGP data (z = -3.00, 
-3.68, -3.00) and 2 from NFC score data (z = -2.71, -2.99), 
leaving a sample of 154 respondents for analysis. The de-
scriptive and normality test statistics are given in Table 1. 
Manipulation Check
 To determine whether the awe video stimulus 
elicited a higher level of awe emotion as compared to 
the amusement video and the neutral emotion vid-
eo, an emotion manipulation check was done using 
a one-way ANOVA. The data were screened for nor-
mality assumptions before performing an ANOVA. 
Histograms and Q-Q plots showed a normal distri-
bution. Inspection of box plots did not reveal any 
outliers. The z-scores for skewness of awe levels for 
awe, amusement, and neutral stimuli were –1.67, 
1.36 and 0.15 respectively. The z-scores for kurtosis 
of awe levels for awe, amusement, and neutral stimu-
li were 1.62, -1.17 and –2.09 respectively - all within 
the acceptable +/- 2.58 range for a sample size of 154. 
The K-S and S-W tests being significant suggested the 
distribution deviated from normal, but ANOVA has 
been found to be robust enough to account for such 
small anomalies (Field, 2013). Levene’s statistic was 

not significant (p =  .34), so homogeneity of variance 
was assumed. The descriptive and normality test sta-
tistics of data analysed using SPSS are given in Table 2.
 A one-way ANOVA was used to examine the effect 
of the three different emotion stimuli on the level of awe 
elicited. The results revealed that there was a statistical-
ly significant difference in the mean level of awe elicited 
between at least two groups (F(2, 151) = 8.35, p = .001). 
Tukey’s HSD Test for multiple comparisons found 
that the mean level of awe elicited was significantly dif-
ferent between awe stimulus and amusement stimulus 
(p = 0.001, 95% CI = [.63, 2.50]), as well as between 
awe stimulus and neutral stimulus (p = .015, 95% CI 
= [.18, 2.06]). Awe video stimulus generated more awe 
as compared to amusement or neutral video stimuli.
Assumptions Check
 Based on the rationale given in the Analytic 
strategy earlier, the residuals for AGP were exam-
ined for normality. While the Zkurtosis (.51/.39 
= 1.31) was in the desirable range of +/- 2.58, the 
Zskewness (-1.22/.19 = -6.42), histogram and Q-Q
 plots showed the residuals of AGP were not normal-
ly distributed. Thereafter, a Log 10 transformation 
was done on the AGP reflected data and its residuals 
were examined for normality which showed acceptable 
Zskewness (.49/.19 = -2.50) and Zkurtosis (1.00/.389 
= 2.57) of between +/- 2.58 and close to normal histo-
gram and Q-Q plots. Skewness and Kurtosis were then 
checked for the residuals of AGP Log 10 transformed 
reflected data for all six levels of IV conditions (3 emo-
tion types x 2 NFC levels) separately. This too pro-
duced Zskewness and Zkurtosis scores between accept-
able limits of +/- 2.58. While the residuals of Log 10 
transformed AGP reflected data met the requirements 
of normality for conducting an ANOVA, the Levene’s 
statistic was significant, p = .014, showing that homo-
geneity of variance cannot be assumed, and the results 
should be interpreted with caution (Field, 2013). 
Main Analysis
 Results of the factorial ANOVA revealed that, 
contrary to H1, there was no significant main effect of 
emotion type on AGP (F(2, 148) = 0.06, p = .94, ηp2 
= .001). In contrast with H2, there was no significant 
main effect of NFC on AGP (F(1, 148) = 2.01, p = .16, 
ηp2 = .013). In contrast with H3, there was no signif-
icant interaction effect between NFC and emotion 
type on AGP (F(2,148) = 0.47, p = .62, ηp2 = .006). 
For all groups, ηp2 values suggested a small effect size.



69

Discussion
 In this study we examined if induced awe (com-
pared to amusement or neutral emotions) reduces 
AGP, if high NFC (vs. low NFC) leads to higher AGP, 
and if NFC moderates the effect of awe on AGP. The 
results did not support the first hypothesis since par-
ticipants in the awe condition did not differ in their 
reduction of AGP, from those in the amusement or 
neutral emotion conditions. The second hypothesis 
was also not supported since participants with high 
NFC did not significantly differ in their AGP scores 
from those with low NFC. Also, the results did not 
support the third hypothesis since no interaction ef-
fect of induced awe and NFC was found on AGP. 
 The finding that an awe-inducing intervention did 
not reduce AGP stands in contrast with the findings of 
Stancato and Keltner (2021) who found that induced 
awe (using similar stimuli as the present study) reduced 
conviction in attitudes towards racial outgroups. One 
point of difference between the two studies pertains 
to the demographic skew in the respective samples. 
Stancato and Keltner (2021) recruited their sample 
entirely from Amazon Turk whose respondent pool 
had a male skew (54% male), older age skew (70% aged 
>30 years) and had only 22.3% represented by student 
respondents (Levay et al., 2016). In contrast, the pres-
ent study had a female skew (71% female), younger age 
skew (50% aged < 30 years and modal age = 23 years), 
and a student skew (64% students). Multiple studies 
have shown that women are less sexually prejudiced 
than men, and this difference is especially large among 
college students (Kite & Whitley, 1996). Younger peo-
ple, especially students who volunteer to participate in 
sexuality-related research, also have more sexual expe-
riences and less restrictive values than their peers (Wie-
derman, 1999). College students express less prejudice 
than an average individual (Judd et al., 1995) and are 
more aware of modern social proscription against the 
expression of prejudice (Crandall & Eshleman, 2003). 
College students have had more exposure to some form 
of diversity or antibias training (McCauley et al., 2000). 
This demographic skew of the sample could help ex-
plain the present study’s significantly more favourable 
attitudinal responses to homosexuality than expected.
 The results pertaining to the first hypothesis were 
however in line with Dale et al. (2020), who did not 
find a significant effect of induced awe on reduction of 
negative stereotypical attitudes toward African Amer-

icans. Dale et al. (2020) posited that individuals may 
not perceive the effects of induced awe beyond the 
emotion itself, and the attitudinal shifts that are ex-
pected to happen in response to the experience of awe 
are likely to be outside of conscious awareness there-
by impacting only implicit attitudes and not explicit 
attitudes. Since both Dale et al. (2020) and this study 
used a prejudice scale measuring explicit attitudes, this 
may have led to insignificant effects of induced awe 
on prejudice reduction in both studies. Using scales 
measuring explicit attitudes could have also led to 
inauthentic measurement of prejudice in both cases. 
Specific to this study, another drawback of using an ex-
plicit scale for measuring AGP is the assumption that 
people will explicitly express their prejudice, which 
does not always happen, because of social desirabili-
ty reasons (Steffens, 2005). Crandall and Eshleman’s 
(2003) ‘justification-suppression model’ for prejudice 
expression posits that because of suppression by so-
cial norms people do not directly express their gen-
uine prejudices. When it comes to prejudice, what 
is felt and what is reported are two different things. 
 Implicit measures like the Implicit Association 
Test (IAT) are rarely used in sexual prejudice research, 
but may provide more accurate results (Banse et al., 
2001). In an experiment, Banse et al. (2001) conduct-
ed among 79 German students, attitudes towards gays 
and lesbians were tested using both an explicit scale and 
an IAT adapted from Greenwald et al. (1998). This 
study found that participants faked explicit attitudes 
(which were very positive) but could not fake implicit 
attitudes (which were relatively negative). In another 
study, Coffman et al. (2016) found that widely used 
explicit measures of anti-gay sentiments produce sig-
nificant underestimation in existing surveys because of 
social desirability, even when responses are private and 
anonymized. Coffman et al. (2016) conducted an ex-
periment where 2,516 U.S. participants were random-
ly assigned to either a “best practices method” that was 
computer-based and provided privacy and anonymity, 
or to a veiled elicitation method that provided even 
more anonymity since it did not allow inference of any 
answer to any individual but could be used to accu-
rately estimate statistics about the population. The re-
sults showed that the veiled method increased the rates 
of anti-gay sentiment substantially. Respondents were 
67% more likely to express disapproval of an openly gay 
manager at work and 71% more likely to say it is okay 

CAN INDUCED AWE REDUCE ANTI-GAY PREJUDICE?



70

GUPTA & HAMLIN

to discriminate against lesbian, gay, or bisexual individ-
uals. This could explain why attitudes towards homo-
sexuals, as assessed with an explicit questionnaire in this 
study, showed higher than expected favourable results.
 This study’s findings could also imply that the na-
ture of awe-inducing stimuli used in this study might 
not have been potent enough or directly relevant to 
the domain of effecting changes in sexual prejudicial 
attitudes. According to Shiota et al. (2007), approxi-
mately half of all awe experiences arise in response to 
awe-inspiring virtuous or magnanimous actions of 
people of high stature and the next largest category 
of awe elicitors is nature. Our elicitors of awe were 
quite mild and included images only in the domain of 
nature. This raises the questions of whether more in-
tense elicitors of awe (like in-vivo or virtual reality ex-
periences of awe through immersion in nature) or awe 
elicitors that were more directly related to the domain 
of prejudice (like speeches of inspiring public figures 
or virtuous individuals within a community) could 
be more effective in reduction of sexual prejudice. 
 The finding that NFC did not have a causal effect 
on AGP is contrary to Soenen et al. (2005), who found 
a significant correlation between these two constructs. 
A point of difference between these studies that could 
explain the unexpected results for the second hypoth-
esis, is that the present study was done online, while 
Soenen et al.’s (2005) studies were conducted in-per-
son. According to Krosnick (1991), some respondents 
take a shortcut to providing answers in a self-report 
questionnaire engaging in ‘satisficing’ behaviours like 
response non-differentiation, random responding, 
and speeding. These ‘satisficing’ behaviours are more 
prominent in online studies because of the ease of 
responding and lack of a sense of accountability be-
cause there is no supervision (Heerwegh & Loosveldt, 
2008). It is possible that due to the online mode of 
conducting this study, the respondents showed high-
er ‘satisficing’ behaviours in their responses that led 
to measurement errors for AGP (Fricker et al., 2005). 
 Another reason for NFC not showing a main 
effect on AGP could be related to the individual dif-
ferences in SDO and RWA levels for the participants. 
Soenen et al. (2005) found that homophobia had a 
stronger correlation with RWA than with SDO, and 
Van Hiel et al. (2004) found a positive effect of NFC 
on racial prejudice that was fully mediated by RWA 
but not SDO. A practical implication of Van Hiel et 

al.’s (2004) findings is that the interventions aimed 
at reducing NFC could potentially reduce racial (and 
other forms of) prejudice by reducing the RWA lev-
els, but would not be successful in reducing SDO 
levels; therefore, their impact would be substantial 
in individuals with high RWA but not significant in 
those with high SDO. While the present study’s scope 
did not include the measurement of RWA and SDO 
levels in participants, it is possible that more partici-
pants with high NFC in this study had high SDO 
levels (and not high RWA levels), which is probably 
why NFC did not show the expected effect on AGP. 
 The finding that there was no interaction effect of 
awe and NFC on AGP was contrary to Dhont et al. 
(2011), where they found that NFC moderates the re-
lationship between intergroup contact and racial prej-
udice. This contradiction could be because inter-group 
contact and awe work differently as prejudice-reduc-
ing interventions - while awe is a self-transcendent 
positive emotion that works through self-diminish-
ment and humility (Shiota et al., 2007), intergroup 
contact works through reducing negative emotions 
of anxiety and fear about outgroups (Pettigrew & 
Tropp, 2008). Alternatively, it could be because ra-
cial prejudice has a higher correlation with NFC than 
sexual prejudice does with NFC (Soenen et al., 2005).  
 The results of this study had several implica-
tions. First, these results showed that the induce-
ment of awe does not result in sexual prejudicial at-
titude changes at an explicit level (Dale et al., 2020). 
Second, these results suggested that factors beyond 
NFC (like RWA and SDO) may influence the ef-
fectiveness of awe-based interventions in reducing 
prejudice. And lastly, the nonsignificant results 
raised questions about the conditions under which 
awe might be effective in reducing sexual prejudice. 
Limitations
 This study had the following limitations. Firstly, 
like most research on sexual prejudice (Bartos et al., 
2014) this study too used a standardised self-report 
sexual prejudice scale measuring explicit attitudes to-
wards homosexuals. As discussed above, this could 
have led to inauthentic reporting of AGP. Dasgupta 
and Hunsinger (2008) noted that limited resources are 
the main reasons for performing online research on 
convenience samples, as was the case with the present 
study too. The second limitation of this study was em-
ploying a convenience sample that heavily skewed the 



71

CAN INDUCED AWE REDUCE ANTI-GAY PREJUDICE?

demographics in favour of younger female students 
who, as discussed earlier, are less sexually prejudiced 
than the general population. Thirdly, this study used 
an online delivery mode that could have led to mea-
surement errors. Fourthly, this study used a mild elic-
itor of awe in the domain of nature, not directly relat-
ed to the domain of prejudice reduction. Lastly, this 
study did not consider the mediating roles that RWA 
and SDO could play on the effect of NFC on AGP.
 Future research should consider making the fol-
lowing methodological modifications. First, use im-
plicit measures like the IAT used by Banse et al. (2001) 
or veiled elicitation methods used by Coffman et al. 
(2016) to achieve a more ‘authentic’ assessment of 
AGP. Second, recruit a purposive sample to achieve 
more representative quotas for age, gender, and occu-
pation to diminish the sampling bias (Bethlehem & 
Stoop, 2007). Third, conduct the study in an in-per-
son laboratory setting instead of online to minimize 
measurement errors. Fourth, either use more potent 
elicitors of awe like an in-vivo or a virtual reality ex-
perience of awe in nature, or use awe stimuli like 
awe-inspiring speeches of virtuous individuals of stat-
ure, which would be in the domain of prejudice re-
duction. Fifth, measure the RWA and SDO levels in 
participants and assess the meditation effects of RWA 
and SDO variables on the impact of NFC on AGP.   
Conclusion
 In conclusion, this experimental study aimed to 
test if high NFC individuals show higher anti-gay prej-
udice, if induced awe can reduce anti-gay prejudice, 
and if it can do so more in prejudice prone (high NFC) 
individuals. While the results did not support any of 
the hypotheses, this study’s findings contribute to the 
ongoing debate about whether and under what con-
ditions prejudice can be reduced via induced awe in 
high NFC individuals. While some studies have shown 
awe to change prejudicial attitudes at an explicit level, 
some, including this study, have suggested that it does 
so only at an implicit level. Some studies have shown 
that mild awe elicitors like awe-inspiring nature videos 
are effective in attitude change, while some others in-
cluding this study, posit that more potent elicitors of 
awe are required. Some studies have found that high 
NFC is linked to high levels of sexual prejudice, where-
as some others have found that this relationship is 
more strongly mediated by RWA and not so much by 
SDO. The potential for this line of research continues 

to hold. Future research with suitable methodologi-
cal changes is recommended. Such suggested changes 
are: using implicit measures or veiled elicitation meth-
ods for authentic measurement of AGP, employing 
more potent elicitors of awe, assessing the mediating 
role of RWA and SDO on the effect of induced awe 
on sexual prejudice reduction, recruiting a purposive 
sample that is more representative of the general pop-
ulation, and conducting an in-person study instead 
of an online study to reduce measurement errors.   

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CAN INDUCED AWE REDUCE ANTI-GAY PREJUDICE?

Table 1

Anti-Gay Prejudice (AGP) Scores Across Emotion Stimulus and Need for Closure (NFC)



76

Table 2

Elicited Awe Scores Across Emotion Stimulus

GUPTA & HAMLIN


