Heterosexist microaggressions, student academic experience and perception of campus climate: Findings from an Italian higher education context

whether microaggressions were perpetrated by peers, faculty, or staff. As reported by Norris and colleagues [10], although students are more likely to hear other students make slurs, f- aculty and staff also engage in discriminatory behaviors and this factor requires additional investigation. Furthermore, we only examined the effects of students’ passive witnessing of heterosexist microaggressions on campus, without considering possible effects of being directly targeted or victimized, as well as of actively contributing to heterosexist microaggres- sions. Future research should also investigate the possible differential impact of heterosexist microaggressions among specific sexual minority sub-groups, including transgender and bisexual people. Some studies, for instance, have highlighted that bisexual individuals experi- ence additional stressors related to their sexual identity compared to lesbians and gay men. In fact, bisexuality is often viewed as an illegitimate and unstable sexual orientation, even by other sexual minorities. They can be perceived as sexually irresponsible, promiscuous or unable to have monogamous relationships [42]. Conclusions Higher education institutions are complex social systems where relationships among individu- als and groups have a profound effect on the academic community’s ability to excel in teaching, research, and scholarship [3]. The results of this study support the importance of addressing subtle forms of heterosexist discrimination on campus in order to create a diverse and inclusive

campus community, where not only sexual minorities are actively accepted, but all students feel equally welcome and engaged. Supporting information S1 Data. (XLSX) Acknowledgments We thank all students who participated in this research and the many research assistants who helped gather data. Author Contributions Conceptualization: Anna Lisa Amodeo, Concetta Esposito, Dario Bacchini. Data curation: Anna Lisa Amodeo, Concetta Esposito. Formal analysis: Concetta Esposito. Investigation: Concetta Esposito. Methodology: Anna Lisa Amodeo, Concetta Esposito, Dario Bacchini. Project administration: Anna Lisa Amodeo. Supervision: Dario Bacchini. Writing – original draft: Anna Lisa Amodeo, Concetta Esposito. Writing – review & editing: Anna Lisa Amodeo, Concetta Esposito, Dario Bacchini. PLOS ONE Heterosexist microaggressions and campus climate PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0231580 April 16, 2020 14 / 16