Rainbow Plot
What is hiding behind the rainbow plot?
The gender ideology
Previous literature on conspiracy beliefs has an important gap, as it has almost completely excluded conspiracy beliefs relating to LGBTQ+ people. The purpose of the present research was to develop and validate a specific tool to measure the Gender Ideology and LGBTQ+ Lobby Conspiracies Beliefs: the GILC scale.
Two independent data collections (Ntot = 1.908) were run involving both heterosexual and gay, lesbian and bisexual people. We expected a mono-factorial structure of the tool, with high levels of internal reliability, invariant by respondents’ gender, sexual orientation and previous knowledge or hearsay of gender ideology.
Furthermore, we expected that GILC scale manages to measure a differentiated construct: (a) compared to other specific and general conspiracy contents; (b) compared to a generic disposition to engage in conspiratorial mentality; (c) compared to existing measures of sexual prejudice, stereotypes and negative attitudes towards sexual minority people.
In relation to criterion validity, we expected that several psychosocial and socio-political ideology variables (i.e. RWA and SDO), would associate with high levels in GILC scale. The results confirmed our expectations, showing that GILC scale is a short tool which include nine items with a mono-factorial structure and with excellent psychometric properties. Limitations and further research directions are discussed.
Even though the studies on conspiracy theories (CTs) are growing considerably, this literature has an important gap, as it has almost completely excluded conspiracy beliefs relating to LGBTQ+ people: the idea that a ‘gay lobby’ exists and that it wants to spread homosexuality through the indoctrination of minors, the disruption of the natural/moral order and the foundation of a dictatorial ideology grounded on ‘gender theory’ (a void expression without any scientific foundation; Bettinsoli et al., 2022).
Such CTs are often used as arguments in political debate in Italy and Europe to hinder the passing of laws and negatively affect popular consensus regarding the fight against discrimination towards LGBTQ+ people, the promotion of anti-discrimination policies in school and work contexts and the advancement of civil rights (i.e. the egalitarian marriage, the access to the different forms of parenthood and so on).
Contrary to the Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025 of European Commission, in many countries there is a stalemate or even a retreat of the rights for LGBTQ+ people, to which the spread of CTs also contributes. Just a few examples: in Italy the ‘Law Zan’ for the fight against homophobia has been rejected by the Parliament.
in Hungary, a recently adopted law prohibits access to content that promotes or portrays homosexuality for minors; in Poland, LGBTQ-free zones are arising to ban equality marches and other LGBTQ+ events.
The purpose of the present research was to develop and validate a specific tool to measure the Gender Ideology and LGBTQ+ Lobby Conspiracy Beliefs: the GILC scale. Developing a new scale to measure specific LGBTQ+ CTs would be useful for several reasons.
On the one hand, existing general conspiracy or sexual prejudice tools may not capture the unique beliefs and experiences of individuals who hold specific LGBTQ+ CTs. These beliefs often involve the idea that there is a deliberate and coordinated effort by powerful LGBTQ+ lobbies to gain further power over the general population, which may not be fully captured by more general conspiracy or prejudice measures.
LGBTQ Culture
On the other hand, a new tool specifically designed to measure LGBTQ+ CTs would allow researchers to better understand the prevalence and impact of these beliefs. This could provide important insights into the factors that contribute to the development and maintenance of these beliefs, as well as the potential consequences for individuals who hold them. Indeed, such a tool could be used to explore the relationship between specific LGBTQ+ CTs and other variables of interest, such as political ideology, religiosity or exposure to anti-LGBTQ messages.
In summary, a new scale to measure specific LGBTQ CTs would be a useful research tool because it would provide a more nuanced understanding of the unique beliefs and experiences of individuals who hold these beliefs and could help to identify potential targets for interventions aimed at reducing their prevalence and impact.
In addition, to date, the few psychological studies that have mentioned the CTs related to LGBTQ+ issues, did it scratch the surface of the phenomenon only. Bettinsoli et al. (2022) found that the stereotypical idea that LGBTQ+ people are very rich and well-off was related to higher denial of discrimination against them, and that the belief in the existence of a ‘gay agenda’ designed and disseminated by a powerful lobby mediated such relationship.
However, the measure used in that study consisted in two items only, which mainly referred to the economic power of an alleged homosexual agenda (i.e. ‘There is a lot of money behind the homosexual agenda’), and which did not take into account all the characteristics that contribute to define a CT.
Thus, considering the lack of studies that have directly investigated LGBTQ+ CTs, this current research could constitute a first concrete attempt to contribute to filling this gap, and provide a novel tool compared to previous measures of general and specific CTs.
Participants and procedures
A first data collection was conducted to run exploratory factor analysis of the GILC scale. Given the lack of specific power analyses for EFAs, the sample size was established following the recommendations of numerous papers (Howard,
016) that suggest using at least a 5-to-1 participant-to-variable ratio. We therefore administered an initial pool of 39 items to 500 participants, resulting in a ratio of 12.8 which was higher than the one commonly used.
The sample consists of 500 Italian heterosexual participants (Males = 307; 61.4%;), with 18–54 years (M = 27.95; SD = 8.47). Participants were recruited via Prolific and received monetary compensation to participate in the research (£5.00/h) and the average compilation time was around 10–15 min. Inclusion criteria consisted in the following characteristics:
(a) heterosexual sexual orientation.
(b) Italian nationality; and (c) at least 18 years old. Individuals who met these criteria were asked via Prolific to take part to the research, presented as an online survey to assess some general political opinions about social and gender issues.
All the participants read the informed consent before proceeding with the online questionnaire by Qualtrics, which adhered to the revised Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Department of Human Science, University of Verona, Italy. Subsequently, participants provided socio-demographic data).
Finally, the 39 items of GILC scale were administered and the questionnaire. The questionnaire ended by thanking the participants, who were sent back to the Prolific site for the compensation.
Measures
Although Prolific allowed in advance to contact only participants who met the inclusion criteria, we preferred to ask for confirmation for all the required characteristics. Participants were invited to indicate their gender, age, sexual orientation, current residency, educational level, working status and socio-economic status, using the depicted 10-step ladder (Adler et al., 2000), where 1 corresponds to the level of Italians who are worst off in terms of income, and 10 corresponds to the level of Italians who are best off.
Participants selected their gender choosing one of the three options (male, female, other), and in case of ‘other’ they were invited to write their gender. Similarly, participants expressed their sexual orientation by selecting one of the six alternatives (1 = exclusively heterosexual, 2 = mostly heterosexual, 3 = bisexual, 4 = mostly homosexual, 5 = exclusively homosexual and 6 = other), and in case of ‘other’ option they were invited to specify their sexual orientation (Salvati et al., 2019, 2021; Salvati & Chiorri, 2023).
Furthermore, participants indicated their religion, whereas their level of religiosity was measured through a five-item scale (Pellegrini et al., 2019) where participants had to report on a 5-point Likert scale (from 1 = not at all to 5 = completely) the levels of attendance at religious rites, the importance of religion for them, having received a religious education, considering oneself a religious individual and adhering to the precepts of religion (Cronbach’s alpha = .86). Participants indicated their political orientation through one single item on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 = extreme left to 7 = extreme right.
Finally, GILC scale was administered. Before the 39 items of the GILC scale, participants answered to a single item on a 5-point Likert scale, investigating the previous knowledge/hearsay about ‘gender ideology’: To what extent do you know (you have heard of, you are informed about, you know what is meant by ‘gender ideology’?) Likert scale ranged from 1 = not at all to 5 = completely.
Subsequently, the 39 items of the GILC scale were presented in a randomized order and people indicated their degree of agreement on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = totally disagree to 5 = totally agree. For the full list of items see Appendix
Discussion
Different characteristics, although, as might be expected, the GILC scores might differ slightly in terms of baseline levels and average scores between the heterosexual and LGB participants.
The final nine-item version of the GILC scale covers all the main themes that characterize conspiracy beliefs such as the presence of an elite ‘against’ most people (i.e. the heterosexual individuals), the secrecy dimension; the aspect of the power, and the malevolent scope such as the spread of gender ideology, etc. (Douglas et al., 2019, 2022; Douglas & Sutton, 2011, 2018, 2023).
Also, the results of construct validity confirmed that GILC scale do not overlap neither to other specific and general conspiracy contents, nor to a disposition to engage in conspiratorial mentality, nor to existing measures of sexual prejudice and negative attitudes against LGBTQ+ individuals.
In addition, the results confirmed the criterion validity of the GILC scale, by showing that high GILC score are predicted by several variables which previous literature found to be associated with conspiracy beliefs (Douglas & Sutton, 2023; Pellegrini et al., 2019; Salvati et al., 2022) and sexual prejudice (Adelman et al., 2021; Lingiardi et al., 2005; Piumatti & Salvati, 2020).
Specifically, higher religiosity, right-wing political orientation, higher right-wing authoritarianism, higher social dominance orientation and higher competitive jungle beliefs, were associated with higher scores of GILC scale.
Correlational results also showed that both heterosexual and LGB people with high levels in GILC scale are more likely to report high levels of denial of discriminations of LGBTQ+ people, and high levels of economic myths about gay and lesbian people.
On the contrary, both heterosexual and LGB people with high LGBTQ+ CTs are less likely to support LGBTQ+ civil rights and lower LGBTQ+ collective action intentions.
Although such results do not allow to infer causal–effect relationships, they seem to provide a first support to some potential negative associations of LGBTQ+ CTs with stereotypes, prejudice and actions towards LGBTQ+ people and rights.
Future research might corroborate such relationships through experimental research design, which may clarify if the LGBTQ+ CTs have negative effects on such variables of whether these reinforce and perpetuate the LGBTQ CTs.
Regarding LGB sample, the positive association between internalized sexual stigma (ISS) and LGBTQ+ CTs is noteworthy, and in our opinion, it provides an interesting insight to be explored in future research.
Engaging in LGBTQ+ CTs might help LGBTQ+ people to maintain a sense of group identity, providing a sense of belonging and empowerment. Also, adhering to LGBTQ+ CTs could serve as a coping strategy for LGBTQ+ people, providing them a sense of control and agency and allowing to attribute their challenges to external forces, thus reducing stress.
Similarly, LGBTQ+ CTs might be used by LGBTQ+ people with high ISS to explain the perceived threats and injustices faced, providing an alternative narrative that places blame on powerful LGBTQ+ entities or groups. However, we highlight that these are just speculation which should be investigated in future studies.
The research has some limitations. First, our results do not have high generalizability because participants were all cisgender individuals from Italy. Future research might be conducted through cross-national studies to validate the GILC scale in international contexts and including trans* participants.
Conspiracy theories
Conspiracy theories (CTs) are beliefs according to which at least two persons have secretly organised to reach a scope which is not known to the public, even though it is of public interest (Douglas & Sutton, 2023).
There are several themes that characterize CTs such as the oppositional nature, in the sense that they counter the publicly accepted explanation of an event, the description of a malevolent act, the attribution of agency to powerful persons and groups rather than to systemic effects, the tendency to falsity and the potential to interpret and to shape social events (Biddlestone, Green, et al., 2022; Douglas et al., 2019, 2022; Douglas & Sutton, 2011, 2018; Imhoff et al., 2022; Jolley et al., 2020; Liekefett et al., 2021; Wood & Douglas, 2013).
To date, CTs are many and they touch a great number of phenomena and aspects of reality, ranging from health (Giacomantonio et al., 2022) to the environment and climate (Biddlestone, Azevedo, & van der Linden, 2022), from migratory phenomena (Plenta, 2020) to terrorist attacks (Kruglanski et al., 2022), including all the eccentric ones related to aliens, famous deaths, flat earth, the denial of moon landing and so on (Salvati et al., 2022).
People would endorse CTs to satisfy epistemic needs (i.e. reducing uncertainty and finding meaning), existential needs (i.e. feeling safe, secure and autonomous) and social needs (i.e. desiring to safeguard a positive self or group image; Douglas & Sutton, 2023).
In line with this, on the one hand existing literature has highlighted numerous antecedents that would make people more prone to endorse CTs: paranoia, lower analytic thinking, higher need for cognitive closure, anxious attachment style, lack of control, feelings of powerlessness, high need of uniqueness, high collective narcissism, belonging to low status groups, lower educational and income levels, male gender, single status, jobless condition, having weaker social relationships and so on (for a review
On the other hand, previous studies found that endorsing CTs strikes both individual citizens and the society as a whole (Einstein & Glick, 2015), leading a wide multitude of social and health troubles (Jolley et al., 2022; Jolley & Douglas, 2014; Lo Vecchio et al., 2019): distrust towards scientists (Chayinska et al., 2021) and political institutions (Sutton & Douglas, 2020); social disengagement (Maftei & Holman, 2022); hostile intergroup relations (Van Prooijen et al., 2022); and hampering individual and public health (Kroke & Ruthig, 2022; Pellegrini et al., 2021; Pummerer et al., 2022).
Also, existing studies tested predictor models showing that believing in CTs about a specific social group is correlated with more negative attitudes and discrimination against that outgroup, and other social groups (Jolley et al., 2020).
The current research
The purpose of the present research was to develop and validate a specific tool to measure the Gender Ideology and LGBTQ+ Lobby Conspiracy Beliefs: the GILC scale. Thus, the first step consisted in constructing the measurement scale, defining the construct and developing the potential items.
We expected a mono-factorial structure of the tool, with high levels of internal reliability (Cronbach’s alpha > .70), invariant by respondents’ gender, sexual orientation and previous knowledge or hearsay of gender ideology.
Our expectation about the mono-factorial structure of the tool was based on the evidence that almost all scales investigating specific conspiracy contents show a mono-factor structure, such as the Conspiracy Beliefs about COVID-19 (Giacomantonio et al., 2022), the Conspiracy Beliefs About HIV Scale (Bogart & Thorburn, 2005) and the Vaccine Conspiracy Beliefs Scale (Shapiro et al., 2016).
Furthermore, even previous validated scales measuring different conspiracy beliefs failed in finding multifactorial structures, such as the General Conspiracy Contents (Brotherton et al., 2013) or the Belief in Conspiracy Theories Inventory (Swami et al., 2010).
Similarly, previous research confirmed gender invariance of several tools measuring conspiracy contents (Drinkwater et al., 2020; Jovanović et al., 2023), suggesting that underlying psychological processes or cognitive biases associated with conspiracy beliefs may operate independent of participants’ gender.
Furthermore, since our tool assesses conspiracy beliefs directly related to LGBTQ+ topics, it is possible that the GILC scale may show metric and configural invariance, but not scalar invariance across groups with different sexual orientations, and therefore scores would differ slightly in terms of baseline levels and average score between such groups.
At the same time, we paid attention that all the main themes that should characterize the CTs (see Douglas & Sutton, 2023) were represented by the items of the GILC scale (i.e. the presence of an elite ‘against’ the heterosexual people; the secrecy feature; the aspect of the power; the malevolent aims such as the spread of gender ideology, etc.). These characteristics, although they constitute specific aspects, contribute as a whole to determine a CT without claiming that they determine a multifactorial structure.
Based on these themes and a review of literature, five experts in the fields of CTs and/or attitudes towards LGBTQ+ people (a full professor, an associate professor and three post-doc research fellows) participated in a series of online focus groups.
During the meetings, articles from Italian newspapers were also shared in which there were statements by politicians who cited or explicitly expressed statements concerning LGBTQ+ CTs.
For example, in Italy there had been a very heated political debate on the bill against discriminations based on genders and sexual orientations—DDL Zan, subsequently rejected by parliament—and several politicians from right-wing parties used the conspiratorial rhetoric of Gay lobbies to counter that bill.
Such statements offered several insights to construct the items of the GILC scale. A total of 39 items was generated for the initial pool by consensus of all the five experts, after that revisions were made to the items to improve the clarity.
Furthermore, we want to verify that GILC scale manages to measure the specificity of the construct, which should constitute a differentiated dimension:
(a) compared to other specific and general conspiracy contents, that scientific literature showed often to constitute a monolithic set of beliefs, highly correlated among them (i.e. conspiracies on vaccines, migrants, etc);
(b) compared to a generic disposition to engage in conspiratorial mentality, susceptible to beliefs and explanations based on CTs; (c) compared to existing measures of sexual prejudice, stereotypes and negative attitudes towards sexual minority people. In this regard, we expect correlations of GILC scale with such variables with low or moderate effect size, showing a good construct validity.
In relation to criterion validity, previous literature found that several socio-demographics (i.e. male gender, older people, low education), high religiosity, right-wing political orientation, populist ideologies, right-wing authoritarianism (RWA), high levels of social dominance orientation (SDO), dangerous world beliefs (DWBs), and competitive jungle beliefs (CJBs) predicted high levels of conspirative beliefs (Adam-Troian et al., 2022; Douglas & Sutton, 2023; Pellegrini et al., 2019; Salvati et al., 2022) and sexual prejudice in heterosexual people (Adelman et al., 2021; Lingiardi et al., 2005; Piumatti & Salvati, 2020) and high levels of internalized sexual stigma in LGB people (Lingiardi et al., 2012; Salvati et al., 2019; Salvati & Chiorri, 2023; Salvati, Pistella, & Baiocco, 2018; Salvati, Pistella, Giacomantonio, & Baiocco, 2018).
Thus, similarly, we expect that such predictors would associate with high levels in GILC scale, testifying a very good criterion validity.
Results
Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)
Analyses were run with the RStudio graphical interface (R Core Team, 2022) and its psych (Revelle & Revelle, 2015) and Paran (Dinno & Dinno, 2018) packages. Before proceeding with examination of GILC factorial structure, the normality of distribution for the original pool of 39 items of the GILC was tested.
Skewness and kurtosis limits were ±2.00 and ±7 respectively (Curran et al., 1996). Items that presented values higher than these parameters were excluded from the EFA (see Table S2). The remaining 24 items thus showed elevated but not extreme skewness and kurtosis (Curran et al., 1996). Given this normality statistics and the ordinal nature of GILC items, we chose a polychoric correlation matrix for the EFA (Bandalos & Gerstner, 2016; Fabrigar et al., 1999; Lloret et al., 2017). To assess whether the correlation matrix was factorable, we implemented the Bartlett’s test of sphericity (Bartlett, 1950) and the Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin (KMO)
Measure of Sampling Adequacy (Dziuban & Shirkey, 1974; Kaiser, 1970). Bartlett’s test showed that the correlation matrix was not random, χ2(276) = 808.692, p < .001, and the KMO statistic was .98, showing a good value much higher than the lowest standard for proceeding with analysis (Howard, 2016). Hence, the correlation matrix was appropriate for factor analysis.
Once we determined that the correlation matrix was factorable, we investigated the factor structure of the GILC by implementing an EFA with principal axis (PA) factoring extraction method. We opted for PA method as it proved to be robust than other extraction methods (Briggs & MacCallum, 2003; Curran et al., 1996; Norris & Lecavalier, 2010). Factor retention was operated by means of Kaiser criterion, visual scree test (Cattell, 1966) and parallel analysis (Glorfeld, 1995; Horn, 1965)
The analyses revealed that only one factor presented an eigenvalue greater than 1. Specifically, the factor showed a high eigenvalue equal to 18.71 and explained a large portion of variance (i.e. 78.0%). These results provided a preliminary indication in support of our expectation of a one-dimensional structure of the GILC.
This expectation was also corroborated by the analysis of the scree plot, where the eigenvalue curve flattened out after the first factor, and by the parallel analysis where the line of the random eigenvalues intersected that of the estimated eigenvalues (both adjusted and unadjusted) again after the first factor
Once the one-dimensional structure of the GILC was established, we focused on item retention. We found the entire pool of 24 items to show high factor loadings: they ranged from 0.75 to 0.93 Given the growing recommendations on the implementation of short measures that facilitate administration and do not burden participants, we decided to select and include in a new EFA only the items that showed the highest loading, since more representative of the factor. Considering the results of the EFA pertaining the entire pool of 24 items, the loading cutoff was arbitrarily identified in a high value ≥0.90.
Following this criterion, we thus selected a total of nine items and again performed the EFA to test the final one-dimensional solution of GILC. Analysis showed a single factor with an eigenvalue of 7.51, explaining 83.0% of variance, corroborated also by visual scree test and parallel analysis Items’ factor loadings ranged from 0.90 to 0.93
To Finish Off
Although the previous socio-demographic variables were no longer significant, the results confirmed our expectations that, higher SDO, higher RWA and higher CJB were associated with higher scores of GILC scale. Contrary to our expectations, neither DJW nor the two measures of populist ideology were significant predictors of GILC scale
In conclusion, the current research sheds light on several processes related to LGBTQ+ CTs and contributes to describing the next coming threats to a more inclusive and tolerant reality for sexual and gender minority people.
Through the analysis of the relationships among LGBTQ+ CTs and collective action intentions, stereotypes and prejudice against LGBTQ+ people, internalized sexual stigma, we would collect key topics concentrating on societal research to change and improve the actual debate in political, scientific and cultural domains, contributing to produce new policies which might increase the self-determination for all LGBTQ+ people.
Through the present research, we would like to concur to weaken the widespread culture of mandatory cisgenders and heterosexism, and we believe that this project could contribute to a more fine-grained in LGBTQ+ social–psychological research. In the future, other researchers who desire to give their contribution to this line of research
might look at this project to build on research hypotheses and intervention applications, to increase gender equality and make our societies more inclusive (Salvati & Koc, 2022).
