Ideas of social change more comforting to homosexual youth

Researchers found that homosexual youth found the most comfort in messages that both supported them and advocated social change.

The new research not only confirms the power of speaking up for those facing prejudice but also underlines the importance of exactly what is communicated.

Aneeta Rattan of London Business School decided to take a closer look at the 'It Gets Better' YouTube campaign as a window into the content and impact of such "intergroup" communication, and wanted to capture the complexity of people's naturalistic communications as well as to be able to test for systematic differences in what people said.

She found that intergroup support messages that included ideas about social change were more comforting to LGBQ participants than those that included ideas about social connection, which suggests that it is a benefit to communicating ideas about social change more often.

The research was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.