Is multilingualism linked to a higher tolerance of homosexuality? Evidence from a national survey

Psychological variables (e.g. L2 grit) remain a much under-investigated sub-category of individual differences compared with cognitive ones (e.g. aptitude). The present paper aims to gain a better understanding of the psychological effects of multilingualism by investigating tolerance of homosexuality (TH), which has received little scholarly attention from multilingualism researchers. Relevant data from the 2015 Chinese General Social Survey, which utilised a representative national sample (N = 10968) from China, were analysed. Out of the 11 initial independent variables, multilingualism and Internet use emerged as statistically significant predictors for TH; their effect sizes fluctuated around the typical-effect benchmark, suggesting that both were important predictors. Although gender role belief was also a statistically significant predictor, its effect sizes fell well below the small-effect benchmark and hence its link with TH was negligible. As the first systematic attempt to link multilingualism with TH in the field of applied linguistics, the present multidisciplinary study (1) confirms and expands previous studies which show that multilingualism can be considered as an enduring social factor contributing to the shaping of individuals’ psychological profiles, and (2) helps broaden the scope along the research line on homophobia in gender studies by linking it with more social correlates (e.g. multilingualism).