Homophobia
Homophobia is a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are perceived as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. There are many reasons why people would have homophobia and act this way.
The Social Approach: Homophobia might be seen in public and if a person has grown up seeing a lot of homophobia they too could become a homophobe due to it becoming “normal” for them. Also friends might be homophobic so to fit it a person might also try to become one therefore being abusive and threatening towards homosexuals. The Learning Approach: Bad experiences could have happened with homosexuals therefore creating hate towards them, positivity could be rewarded for being homophobic. For example someone might threaten a homosexual to impress their parents or to gain attention. The Psychodynamic Approach: This is less likely but early childhood memories could affect feelings towards homosexuals. For example if a child had a bad argument with a homosexual or a family member could have had an argument with the person therefore creating a long lasting bad memory that affects the person later on in life. Some research methods to find out why people have this hatred towards homosexuals are: a simple interview with a homophobe to try and find out why these feelings are so strong; do an experiment on a homophobe where you place them in a room with a homosexual and see if they can have a conversation and measure the heart rate of the