Essentialist Beliefs About Sexual Orientation: Co-Occurrence, Associated Factors, and Relationship with Sexual...

Research has shown that different essentialist beliefs (notably naturalness, discreteness, homogeneity, and informativeness) about sexual orientation can be endorsed simultaneously and connect to sexual prejudice. However, studies have been carried out mainly in the USA and there are still gaps in explaining the relationship between essentialist thinking and sexual prejudice. We investigated latent profiles of essentialist beliefs about sexual orientation in the Brazilian context; whether specific psychosocial variables explain membership in different latent profiles; and whether membership in different latent profiles explains variations in sexual prejudice attitudes even when considering the effects of other variables. In a cross-sectional design, participants (N = 1038) completed measures of essentialist beliefs, sexual prejudice attitudes, conservatism, religiosity, and other social location variables and data were analyzed through latent profile analyses and regression analyses. Results showed evidence for a three-latent profile solution, overlapping and diverging from previous studies. Higher conservatism and having a monosexual orientation/identity were associated with a greater likelihood of membership in the high DHI (discreteness, homogeneity, informativeness) and multidimensional essentialism than in the intermediary naturalness-only latent profile. Membership in the high DHI and multidimensional essentialism profiles was associated with higher sexual prejudice attitudes, compared to membership in the intermediary naturalness-only profile, even when considering differences in sexual orientation/identity, right-wing authoritarianism-related conservatism, political conservatism, and religiosity. Our findings provide evidence for the co-occurrence of essentialist beliefs about sexual orientation through different patterns and shed light on how they can be associated with more or less sexual prejudice, depending on their simultaneous endorsement.