Sexual Prejudice and Its Multi-Level Correlates Among Social Workers in Hong Kong and Taiwan

Background and Purpose: Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals often need affirmative support and professional services to counteract stigma-based stressors. Despite ethical mandates for inclusivity, sexual prejudices are found to persist among social workers, compromising service quality and equity for LGB clients. Psychological research has identified the duality of bias: explicit biases as conscious and implicit biases as automatic and unconscious, both influencing professional services and judgements. The Bias of Crowds model suggests that biases can be fostered in prejudicial environments, highlighting the need to identify organizational and sociocultural drivers of biases beyond individual traits and characteristics. This study investigated the levels and multi-level correlates of implicit and explicit biases toward LGB individuals among social workers in Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Methods: This cross-sectional study involved 321 social workers from Taiwan (n=103) and Hong Kong (n=218) (Meanage = 33.38, SD = 7.27; 63% female; 64% heterosexual; 66% single). Participants completed the Attitudes towards Lesbians and Gay Men Scale and the Sexuality-Implicit Association Test to assess their explicit and implicit bias towards LGB people respectively. Hierarchical Linear Modelling was used to examine associations between bias measures and predictors, accounting for the nested nature of the data.

Results: Social workers in Hong Kong exhibited higher levels of both implicit (t=3.63, p<0.001) and explicit biases (t=6.66, p<0.001) compared to their Taiwanese counterparts, possibly due to greater societal openness to LGB individuals and the recent legalization of same-sex marriage in Taiwan. Stronger implicit bias was associated with having fewer LGB friends, being male, identifying as heterosexual, and endorsing social dominance and collectivist values. Higher explicit biases were reported by those with fewer LGB friends, identifying as heterosexual, working in religious organizations or perceived as less LGB supportive, and endorsing social dominance values.

Conclusions and Implications: The study underscores the need for distinct assessments of implicit and explicit biases among social workers due to their different tendencies and correlates. The regional differences between Taiwan and Hong Kong support the Bias of Crowds model, emphasizing the sociocultural roots of biases. Personal contact is uniquely associated with lower implicit bias, while explicit biases are linked to organizational policies and practices. These findings highlight the amenability of social workers’ biases towards LGB individuals, calling for targeted, context-specific interventions, including diversity training and fostering positive intergroup contact, to mitigate biases and enhance equitable services for LGB clients.