The Effect of Negative Emotions and Negative Stereotypes on the Perception of SEXUAL MINORITIES

This study was designed to identify the perception towards social minorities and the variables which influence such perception for 230 preliminary police trainees of the Central Police Academy. The data were collected through the survey questionnaires and a multiple regression analysis was performed to conduct frequency analysis, descriptive statistics, and learn about the sense of social distance. The ana-lytical results are as follows. The average value of the sense of social distance towards sexual minorities perceived by the police trainees was 3.65 or higher, whose average difference was not clear, yet the average value(3.07) was lower than the other questions for the questions on whether they are acceptable as members of the family. Examining the results of the final regression analysis performed, it was shown that social minorities related training experience, stereotypes about sexual minorities, and negative emotions about sexual minorities had a significant influence on the police trainees’ sense of social distance towards sexual mi-norities. This indicated that those with the training experience related to social minorities had a less sense of distance, and that the more and higher the stereotypes and negative emotions towards sexual minor-ities, the larger the sense of social distance. This study is meaningful in that it presented the relationship between the sense of social distance and the factors of influence about the sexual minorities for the police trainees who will become the preliminary police officers.