Pride Month Is Over. Support Shouldn’t Be

WU Vienna study shows: Public coming outs within personal networks increase the likelihood that others will come out as well.

How does social change unfold? A study by WU Vienna University of Economics and Business provides a novel answer: People are more likely to come out as LGBTQ after observing others in their personal social network publicly disclose who they are.

The study was conducted by Jan Gromadzki from WU Vienna’s Department of Economics together with Przemysław Siemaszko from the SGH Warsaw School of Economics. Unlike previous studies, the researchers were able to precisely identify the time of thousands of actual public coming out decisions.

Visibility within personal networks matters

The study focuses on the #IamLGBT Twitter campaign that emerged in Poland in 2019 following a violent attack on a Pride march. Thousands of users publicly disclosed their LGBTQ identity by posting messages using the campaign hashtag. The researchers reconstructed the social networks of participating users and analyzed the exact timing of individual coming outs. This allowed them to examine whether people were more likely to come out after members of their own social network had already done so.

The findings are clear: The more people within an individual’s personal network had previously come out, the greater the likelihood that the individual would also publicly disclose their identity. An increase of one standard deviation in exposure to coming outs within a person’s network increased the hourly probability of coming out by approximately 17 to 20 percent.

Close social ties matter more than high status

The strongest effects were observed for coming outs by people connected through reciprocal social ties. In contrast, posts by high-profile accounts or one-sided follower relationships did not produce comparable immediate effects.

Social learning rather than information alone

The researchers argue that the observed effect cannot simply be explained by increased awareness of LGBTQ issues resulting from the campaign itself. Instead, the evidence points to a mechanism of social learning.

When individuals observe people in their own network coming out and receiving positive or only limited negative feedback, they update their expectations about the consequences of coming out themselves. As a result, the perceived barriers to publicly disclosing their identity become lower.

No evidence of increased anti-LGBTQ mobilization

The study also examined whether greater visibility of LGBTQ individuals led to increased activity among anti-LGBTQ users. The researchers found no evidence of such a response. Instead, they observed a modest increase in supportive messages from allies.

Implications for understanding social change

The authors argue that their findings contribute to a broader understanding of how social norms evolve. Public coming outs are not merely individual decisions; they also serve as social signals that shape how others perceive social norms and evaluate the risks associated with revealing their own identity.

FURTHER INFORMATION

Paper

• #IamLGBT: Social networks and coming out, European Economic Review 183 (2026) https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2025.105216

Authors

• Jan Gromadzki, Department of Economics, WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria (corresponding author)

• Przemysław Siemaszko, SGH Warsaw School of Economics, Poland