588 Part VI Learning-Cognitive Theories
Understanding Internalized Prejudice Through
Personal Construct Theory
Perhaps the most insidious characteristic of being a person who belongs to a stig-
matized group occurs when individuals in that group internalize the prejudice and
think negatively of themselves. Studies show that internalized antigay and lesbian
prejudice (typically referred to as internalized homophobia), for example, is asso-
ciated in gay and lesbian individuals with high stress and poor mental health out-
comes (c.f. Szymanski, Kashubeck-West, & Meyer, 2008). Given this, it is
important to understand internalized prejudice in order for clinical and counseling
psychologists to effectively treat suffering individuals.
In 2009, Bonnie Moradi, Jacob van den Berg, and Franz Epting used Kelly’s
personal construct theory to do just that. Internalized homophobia has been concep-
tualized as containing two features: identity separation and identity denigration. These
researchers applied Kelly’s (1991) notions of threat and guilt to the two features of
internalized homophobia. That is, Kelly’s concept of threat, the experience of people
who perceive their basic personal constructs to be unstable, may lead gays and lesbi-
ans to separate their homosexual identity from their self in order to avoid frightening
change in their self-construal. Kelly defined guilt as occurring when individuals per-
ceive that core aspects within themselves are incongruent with how they ought to be.
Guilt, then, may lead gays and lesbians to denigrate homosexual identity.
The study involved 102 participants who ranged in age from 18 to 73, and
who identified themselves as lesbian or gay. They completed questionnaires that
included measures of impression management, internalized anti-lesbian and gay
prejudice, and a measure of 30 bipolar personal constructs derived from a previous
study of 160 participants using the Rep Test (Landfield, 1971). Moradi and col-
leagues’ gay and lesbian participants circled the pole with which they are most
associated, and they did this three times: first for how they see themselves, second
for how they would prefer to see themselves, and last for how they see themselves
while focusing on the fact that they are gay or lesbian. Threat was computed as
the number of self and preferred-self splits from lesbian or gay self. Guilt was
computed as the number of self and lesbian or gay splits from the preferred-self.
Their findings were indeed consistent with Kelly’s concepts of threat and
guilt, and showed that these play distinct roles in internalized prejudice. Kelly’s
idea that individuals remove themselves from threatening constructs was verified
here as threat scores in this sample were associated with lower preference for gay
or lesbian sexual orientation. In keeping with Kelly’s idea that guilt is felt when
individuals perceive undesirable aspects within the self, these gay and lesbian
participants who had high guilt were more denigrating of gay and lesbian identity.
Moradi and colleagues (2009) offer suggestions for personal construct ther-
apy interventions to specifically address threat and guilt in individuals with inter-
nalized prejudice. For example, counselors might draw out contrasts in clients’
construals, asking them to imagine what kind of person would not be anxious
about being gay, enabling a shift from a self-construal that is unacceptable to one
that is acceptable. Guilt reduction techniques would focus on replacing negative
self-construals with more positive ones. Threat reduction might focus on enabling
gay and lesbian clients to see that integrating being homosexual into their desired
self-construal might not mean they must change who they are in fundamental