title: Social Identification and Sexual Minority Psychological Well-Being: Associations with Discrimination, Sexuality Support, and Self-Stereotyping
Creators: name: Hambour, Victoria K
Publisher: name: Griffith University
Year: 2024
Subjects: subject: psychological well-being
subject: sexual minorities
subject: social identification
subject: discrimination
subject: self-stereotyping

description: Sexual minorities report poorer mental health relative to heterosexual persons. This has prompted research aimed at exploring the unique experiences of sexual minorities that may explain this difference. Some of this work has been informed by the social identity approach, which involves two related theories - social identity theory (SIT; Tajfel &amp; Turner, 1979) and self-categorization theory (SCT; Turner et al., 1987) - that attempt to explain intergroup and intragroup phenomenon, such as discrimination and social identification. Social identification represents how strongly a person identifies with their group, including the extent to which they acknowledge their membership (assessed as a cognitive component, centrality), as well as how connected they feel to the group (assessed as an affective component, ingroup ties) and the emotional significance of the group (assessed as a second affective component, ingroup affect). The overarching purpose of the current thesis was to draw upon the social identity approach to explain sexual minorities' well-being, considering minority social identification as a mediator tested in models in Study 1 and as a predictor in models tested in Study 3. As Study 3 examined self-stereotyping as a mediator of the social identification-well-being link, the focus of Study 2 was developing a measure suitable for assessing this construct. Study 1 considered several predictors of well-being as mediated via cognitive and affective components of minority identification. These predictors were founded in SIT and the rejection identification model (Branscombe et al., 1999), and included discrimination from family, discrimination from other people, and peer sexuality support. Participants (118 lesbian women and 66 gay men; Mage = 22.78, SD = 3.49) completed a survey, with multiple regression analyses subsequently testing for direct and indirect effects, and sexual orientation - i.e., lesbian women and gay men - considered as a moderator. Results showed that those who reported more discrimination from family reported more loneliness and psychological distress, and less life satisfaction. Also, as expected, those with stronger ingroup affect reported better well-being, but the cognitive component of identification, centrality, was associated with more loneliness, which was not expected. Higher peer sexuality support was indirectly related to less loneliness and psychological distress via ingroup affect, although comparisons of lesbian women and gay men suggested the path from sexuality support to ingroup affect was significant only for the former. Contrary to the propositions of the RIM, there were no indirect associations of discrimination with well-being via minority identification. Another aim of this thesis was to consider whether measures of positive and negative self-stereotyping, a concept drawn from SCT, mediate the association of minority identification with well-being. To address this aim in Study 3, a trait-based measure of self-stereotyping was developed in Study 2, which included three stages of data collection and analysis: item generation (Stage 1, N = 78 young adults) in focus groups; a short survey to reduce the set of items (Stage 2, N = 44 sexual minority persons); and a survey to analyse the psychometric properties of the items (N = 545 cisgender sexual minorities). The final, valid and reliable, positive and negative self-stereotyping subscales each contained three items. Study 3 concentrated on testing whether positive and negative self-stereotyping mediated the relationship between minority identification and well-being (i.e., distress, loneliness, and self-esteem). Surveys were completed by 185 cisgender monosexual persons (119 lesbian women and 66 gay men; Mage = 22.78, SD = 3.48) and 238 cisgender plurisexual persons (bisexual and pansexual; 199 women and 39 men; Mage = 21.60, SD = 3.34). Regression models were used to conduct the analyses and, as expected, minority identification, particularly more ingroup affect, was related to better well-being (all measures) indirectly via positive self-stereotyping for both samples. The other significant indirect effect through positive self-stereotyping was not in the expected direction, with stronger centrality being indirectly related to more psychological distress in the monosexual sample. Regarding the mediational role of negative self-stereotyping, there were significant indirect effects, via less negative self-stereotyping, from 1) stronger ingroup ties to better well-being on all indicators for the monosexual group, and 2) stronger ingroup affect to less loneliness and better self-esteem for the plurisexual group. Bringing together these studies, there are three general thesis findings. First, the strength of one's minority identification, especially ingroup affect, contributes to the well-being of sexual minorities. Moreover, minority identification should be considered as a multidimensional construct, with different patterns of associations emerging depending on the component of identification considered. Second, it is informative to conduct analyses within subgroups of LGBTQI+ persons (gay men, lesbian women, plurisexual, etc.) as the results can vary. Third, the effects of sexual orientation and gender are difficult to separate, particularly for sexual minority monosexual persons (gay men and lesbian women). This is important to consider when drawing conclusions with these populations as it is possible that some findings might be most closely tied to gender and related experiences, others to sexual orientation, and still others due to both gender and sexual orientation.