**3. Methods**

### **3.1 Participants**

This study was approved by the university's institutional review board. The initial number of participants was 512 undergraduate students who completed the stereotype matrix as a part of a larger survey involving the superhero images. During the data cleaning process, participants were flagged for additional screening and possible

exclusion from analyses when they were missing more than 30% of responses to survey items (*N* = 19), completed the survey in less than 1200 seconds (*N* = 36), took more than 24 hours to complete the survey (*N* = 21), or were not old enough to legally consent to the study (*N* = 1). Furthermore, due to a clerical error in the study design, participants who randomly sorted the condition where they would view the Hispanic Gay hero were shown the incorrect image. Thus, these participants' (*N* = 44) data were excluded from the study. Lastly, exploratory factor analyses (EFAs) were conducted in order to pare down the number of factors taken from the study. Thirtytwo participants were missing data that prevented the computation of factor scores, which lead to their exclusion from final analyses. In sum, the data cleaning process saw the removal of 141 participants, leading to a final analysis pool of 371 participants.

The final sample participants were 371 undergraduate students (34.8% male, 63.6% female, 1.1% nonbinary/ nonconforming, .25% gender fluid, .25% genderless: age 18–60 *M* = 21.1, *SD* = 4.5) from a large, public university in the southwestern United States. Additionally, 296 (79.8%) of participants identified as heterosexual/heterosexual, 15 (4.0%) identified as gay/lesbian/ homosexual, 33(8.9) identified as bisexual, 10 (2.7%) identified as pansexual, 7 (1.9%) identified as asexual, and 10 (2.7%) identified as questioning/unsure. Racially, 178 (48%) participants identified as White, 70 identified as Latinx/Hispanic (18.9%), 53 (14.3%) identified as Black/African American, 28 (7.5%) identified as Asian, 1 (.3%) identified as Middle Eastern/ Arab, 1 (.3%) identified as Native American, and 38 (10.25%) identified as Multiracial.
