ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Soc. Psychol.
Sec. Attitudes, Social Justice and Political Psychology
This article is part of the Research TopicCurrent Research on the Palliative Effect of IdeologyView all 4 articles
Hate the Sin, Not the Sinner: The Differential Effects of Prejudice and System-Justifying Beliefs on Subjective Well-Being
Provisionally accepted
- 1New York University Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
- 2University of Padua, Padua, Veneto, Italy
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This paper examines attitudes toward gender and sexual minorities (GSMs) across 22 countries, focusing on the subjective well-being implications of the "hate the sin, not the sinner" doctrine. While system-legitimizing beliefs (e.g., "hating the sin") are typically associated with prejudice (e.g., "hating the sinner"), research has shown that these two constructs differentially relate to subjective well-being. Drawing from research on system justification theory and prejudice, we find that individuals who adopt this stance experience better well-being. Specifically, we find that prejudice toward GSMs is linked to worse well-being. In contrast, holding system-legitimizing beliefs that reinforce the heteronormative status quo is associated with better subjective well-being, an association that is explained by a more general tendency towards social conservatism. This study sheds light on how and why two related constructs— system justification and prejudice—may differentially impact people's subjective well-being.
Keywords: system justification, LGBT, Subjective wellbeing (SWB), prejudice & discrimination, Anti-GSM prejudice, gender and sexual minorities, System-legitimizing beliefs, Cross-cultural
Received: 27 Jan 2025; Accepted: 24 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Suppes, Bettinsoli and Napier. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Alexandra Suppes, acs22@nyu.edu
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