“I agree with LGBT rights, but…”: Authoritarianism and social dominance orientation underlying hypocritical attitudes of Taiwan society

In the modern public sphere, ordinary people may display hypocrisy in political participation, showing contradictory attitudes across different social issues. But there still exists another type of hypocritical attitude within one single issue, such as agreeing with LGBT rights but refusing to amend the current Civil Code simultaneously in the case of Taiwan. In the same-sex marriage legalizing process, the hypocritical attitude could be observed in Taiwan’s conservative campus, together with the explicitly prejudiced attitude. In this article, we explored the existence of the hypocritical attitude on this issue and discovered its psychological foundations. We conducted an online questionnaire survey in 2018 (N = 544) to measure Taiwanese participants’ attitudes toward same-sex marriage and their psychological dispositions of Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO). Our results showed that while attitudes toward LGBT rights and special-law were negatively correlated, several participants showed the hypocrisy of positive attitudes toward the two sets of questions simultaneously. The hypocritical people shared similar psychological dispositions with the explicitly prejudiced people as high in RWA and SDO while differentiated from the LGBT-friendly people. Attitudinal hypocrisy and explicit prejudice constitute two sides of the conservative camp in Taiwan, which is based on the Confucianism cultural value of interpersonal harmony. The cultural and societal implications were discussed.

该研究关注台湾同性婚姻合法化过程中保守派对同性婚姻的态度，特别是显性偏见与虚伪态度的差异及其心理基础。尽管台湾的反同性婚姻立场受到部分基督教团体推动，但儒家文化中强调人际和谐的传统价值观也在保守派中发挥了重要作用。研究旨在探讨台湾同性婚姻议题中是否存在态度上的虚伪性，如何区分显性偏见与虚伪态度，并考察右翼权威主义（RWA）和社会支配倾向（SDO）作为保守主义心理指标在预测两种态度上的作用及其功能异同。

该研究于2018年1月至4月通过Facebook和其他论坛在线招募544名台湾参与者，完成匿名问卷调查，问卷以中文呈现，历时10-15分钟，所有参与者均自愿参与并可随时退出，数据使用SPSS 25进行分析。研究采用6点量表（-3至3，无0值）测量对同性婚姻的态度，包括支持同性婚姻和支持专法的两个维度，内部一致性较高。右翼权威主义（RWA）量表选取了台湾语境中传统/保守因子负荷最高的三个条目，社会支配倾向（SDO）量表选取了五个负荷最高的条目，均使用6点量表进行测量，内部一致性分别为0.87和0.82。

该研究发现，台湾同性婚姻议题中存在态度虚伪现象，且与显性偏见和支持LGBT态度并存。男性、年长者、右翼权威主义（RWA）和社会支配倾向（SDO）得分较高者更容易表现出虚伪态度，而非真正支持LGBT权利。相比之下，虚伪与显性偏见态度的差异仅能被年龄预测，且效应较小。研究认为，虚伪态度体现了个体和社会层面的保守性，尽管持有虚伪态度者在某些情况下支持LGBT权利，但这种表面的支持并不会转化为推动法律修订的社会压力，实际上与持有显性偏见的保守群体形成事实上的联盟。此外，研究指出虚伪态度并非认知不一致，而是受儒家文化中强调人际和谐与避免冲突的原则驱动，未来研究需进一步探讨其他文化如何促成或抑制虚伪行为，并采用隐性测量方法区分真正支持LGBT权利与因政治正确而表面支持的个体。