Ambiguity Tolerance Toward Nonbinary Sexuality Concepts: Evidence from British Newspapers

Humans tend to construct their worldview via binaries, that is, two distinct, nonoverlapping elements, such as the juxtapositions of human–animal, human–machine, or male–female. Our research focuses on the binary categories of “heterosexuality–homosexuality” and explores how stable or malleablethey are. For this, the authors analyze newspapercoverage of sexuality concepts in the United Kingdom from 1995 to 2010 and quantify if and how tolerance toward ambiguousconcepts including “bisexuality” vary across time as well as with gender, political opinion, and expertise. Our findings indicate a distinct “ millennialeffect” of intolerance toward sexual ambiguity, suggesting that resistance against ambiguityrears up during periods of instability. Conversely, we found higher levels of ambiguity tolerancein left-wing newspapers, broadsheet publications, female journalists, and expert writers, as opposed to right-wing newspapers, tabloid publications, male journalists, and novice writers. Our results c...