Recently published psychological research has found that certain traits are associated with negative attitudes towards homosexual people.

“Homophobia is an extensively described phenomenon from various sociocultural point of views, but the intrapsychic or pathologic characteristics of personality have not been exhaustively explored,” Emmanuele A. Jannini and his colleagues wrote in the study, which was published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.

“To our knowledge, this is the first study assessing both the psychologic and psychopathologic characteristics that could have a predictive in homophobia development.”

The study of 560 Italian university students found that psychoticism — a personality trait associated with delusions, isolations, hostility, and anger — and immature defense mechanisms predisposed individuals to being anti-gay. The researchers said the finding highlighted “a remarkable association between dysfunctional aspects of personality and homophobic attitudes.”

Depression and neurotic defense mechanisms, on the other hand, appeared to lower the risk of being homophobic.

The study also found that men tended to be more homophobic than women.

“After discussing for centuries if homosexuality is to be considered a disease, for the first time we demonstrated that the real disease to be cured is homophobia, associated with potentially severe psychopathologies,” Jannini, president of the Italian Society of Andrology and Sexual Medicine, said in a press release.