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Purpose

A recent Institute of Medicine report concluded that lesbian and gay individuals face discrimination from health care providers and called for research on provider attitudes. Medical school is a critical juncture for improving future providers’ treatment of sexual minorities. This study examined both explicit bias and implicit bias against lesbian women and gay men among first-year medical students, focusing on two predictors of such bias, contact and empathy.

Method

This study included the 4,441 heterosexual first-year medical students who participated in the baseline survey of the Medical Student Cognitive Habits and Growth Evaluation Study, which employed a stratified random sample of 49 US medical schools in fall 2010. The researchers measured explicit attitudes toward gay and lesbian people using feeling thermometer self-assessments, implicit attitudes using the Implicit Association Test, amount and …