Abstract

Previous research on gay stigma—and the courtesy stigma—has uncovered some interesting findings; however, very little research has examined their relationship to trust. Only two previous studies to our knowledge have examined these issues in the context of rating trust in a person’s work product (Rice et al., 2011; Rice & Richardson, in press). The current study extends that research by examining how the gay courtesy stigma affects a target individual’s software program when the programmer has a gay brother or a gay neighbor. The findings from the study reveal that when a programmer is associated with a gay brother or neighbor, his software program is rated as less trustworthy compared to when he is associated with a heterosexual brother or neighbor, or when no information is given about the programmer. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of this research.