(Anticipated) Discrimination against Sexual Minorities in Prosocial Domains

We study the effects of anticipated discrimination in prosocial domains against sexual minorities using a sharing (dictator) game in an online experiment. Recipients are given the opportunity to signal their sexual identity. Decision-makers, upon observing these signals, decide how much of their endowment to share with their matched recipients. We find that female, but not male, recipients are less likely to signal their sexual minority status when they are aware of the potential payoff implications of their decisions. Investigating the treatment of sexual minorities by decision-makers, we find that decision-makers are similarly generous based on the recipient's chosen signal of their sexual minority status. However, the intersection of decision-makers' political affiliations and the perceptions of these signals matter: Republican heterosexual decision-makers are less generous to others whom they perceive to be sexual minorities, while their Democratic counterparts are slightly more generous. This cannot be explained by religious affiliation or perceptions about the recipient's political leaning, but it is consistent with the direction of their implicit bias against homosexuals.