The effect of feeling stereotyped on social power and inhibition

Everyday Sexual and Gender Minority Stress and Health: A Systematic Review of Experience Sampling Studies

Sexual and gender minority stress is associated with negative physical and mental health outcomes, such as hypertension and depression. Expanding on previous reviews of the literature on cross-sectional and long-term prospective associations between sexual and gender minority stress and health outcomes, the current systematic review synthesizes the evidence on how everyday sexual and gender minority stress relates to momentary changes in health. The findings of 53 experience sampling studies published between 2007 and 2022 suggest that daily and momentary within-persons fluctuations in minority stressors are associated with cognitive-emotional (e.g., affect, suicidality), behavioral (e.g., substance use), social (e.g., relationship satisfaction), and physical health outcomes (e.g., somatic symptoms). These findings suggest that sexual and gender minority stress is a dynamic process that can vary within individuals over time and significantly impact everyday mental and physical health. We discuss the implications of these findings for minority stress theory, LGBTQ+ health research, LGBTQ+ affirming therapy, and prevention initiatives. The current experience sampling literature is limited by a lack of attention to gender minority stress and a focus on a limited range of health outcomes. Methodological and theoretical considerations for future experience sampling research are discussed in light of these limitations.

A Systematic and Meta-Analytic Review of Identity Centrality among LGBTQ Groups: An Assessment of Psychosocial Correlates

The degree to which an identity is an important aspect of one's self-concept (i.e., identity centrality) relates to both health and prejudice experiences of minority groups. Individuals with greater levels of identity centrality view their world through the lens of that identity. This allows them to engage in more positive identity-relevant experiences. However, it could also heighten their perceptions of in-group threat. Among LGBTQ groups, the relationship between identity centrality and psychosocial outcomes is yet to be established. In this paper, we investigated the relationship between LGBTQ identity centrality and psychosocial outcomes via a comprehensive systematic (k = 89, N = 35,950) and meta-analytic (k = 57, N = 26,704) literature review. Results indicated that greater levels of LGBTQ centrality relates to more positive identity-relevant affirmations (.155 ≤ r's ≤ .419), but also greater prejudice/discrimination perceptions and experiences (-.271 ≤ r's ≤ -.128). We found no evidence of a relationship between LGBTQ centrality and health outcomes (-.052 ≤ r's ≤ .040). Importantly, we found that these relationships are more beneficial for some LGBTQ groups (gay men), than for others (bisexual/transgender individuals). Findings from this review provide important and necessary insights on the role of LGBTQ identity centrality and identify crucial gaps in the literature that should be addressed.

Adapting to Multiple Sclerosis Stigma Across the Life Span

BACKGROUND

Most people with multiple sclerosis (MS) experience social stigma at mild-to-moderate levels, with potential implications for their health. However, little is known about how adults adapt to social stigma across their lives, or with respect to MS stigma in particular. Using a large national database and controlling for confounding demographic and health-related variables, this study examined whether longer MS duration was associated with reports of stigma in people with MS.

METHODS

Data were available from 6771 participants enrolled in the semiannual survey conducted by the North American Research Committee on Multiple Sclerosis (NARCOMS). Participants completed measures of MS stigma and reported on demographic and health-related covariates.

RESULTS

With disability level, age, and other demographic and health-related covariates taken into account, the longer respondents had lived with MS, the less stigma they felt. Results were similar for people's anticipation of stigma and their feelings of isolation because of stigma.

CONCLUSIONS

As people gain experience living with MS, their adaptations to the social aspects of their illness may allow them to structure their lives so that they can mitigate the impact of stigma. Doctors, therapists, and other health care personnel should consider that patients with MS might be especially concerned and distressed by stigma earlier in the course of their illness.

Power, approach, and inhibition: empirical advances of a theory

The approach-inhibition theory of power proposed that elevated power (which relates to increased rewards and freedom) activates approach-related tendencies, whereas reduced power (which relates to increased threat, punishment, and social constraint) activates inhibition-related tendencies Keltner et al. (2003). In the current article, we review the empirical advances - over the past 16 years - regarding four main propositions of the approach-inhibition theory of power: (a) positive affect versus negative affect, (b) attention to rewards versus attention to threats, (c) automatic cognition versus systematic/controlled cognition, and (d) disinhibited and state/trait driven behavior versus inhibited and situationally constrained behavior. By revealing robust empirical support for, and imaginative extensions of, the four propositions, this review invites future studies of power to further build upon and revise the early claims of approach-inhibition theory.

Reinstating the Resourceful Self: When and How Self-Affirmations Improve Executive Performance of the Powerless

Research has found that lack of power impairs executive functions. In the present research, we show that this impairment is not immutable. Across three studies and focusing on inhibitory control as one of the core facets of executive functions, our investigation shows that self-affirmation attenuates the previously documented decrements in inhibitory control of the powerless (Studies 1-3). We also examine boundary conditions of this effect and demonstrate that self-affirmation is most effective insofar as the powerless lack self-esteem (Study 2). Finally, we directly test the underlying process of this effect and demonstrate that self-affirmation increases an efficacious self-view among the powerless, which in turn improves their inhibitory control abilities (Study 3). Overall, we conclude that reinstating an efficacious self-view through self-affirmation offsets the impairments in inhibitory control abilities of the powerless and reduces the cognitive performance gap between the powerless and the powerful.

Religion From the Target’s Perspective: A Portrait of Religious Threat and Its Consequences in the United States

Little is known about social identity threat from religion or religiosity. We collected data from a diverse sample of Protestants, Catholics, Jews, and Muslims across the United States ( N = 970) to test whether, and for whom, religion and religiosity, like other social identities, can be consequential sources of identity threat. Results suggest that religious threat is highest among religious minority groups (Muslims and Jews) and highly religious Protestants. Threat predicted (1) lower belonging, (2) a greater propensity to conceal one’s religion, and (3) more intergroup bias, although these patterns varied somewhat by religion. Results illuminate how a broader social climate in which religion and specific religious groups are often the subject of heated rhetoric may trigger identity threat and exacerbate intergroup hostilities.

Biopsychosocial correlates of discrimination in daily life: A review

The bulk of the literature on the relationship of discrimination to health has relied on retrospective reports of perceived exposure to discrimination. Much less is known known about the real-time within-person association between discrimination and biopsychosocial processes. Intensive longitudinal methods, including ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and daily diary studies, are well suited for studying the dynamic nature of discriminatory experiences in daily life. This review examines research utilizing EMA and daily diaries to study discrimination within individuals in real-time and natural settings. We identified studies of discrimination related to race, sex, weight, and sexual orientation, and examined the prevalence and frequency of discrimination in daily life, the psychosocial correlates of discrimination, contextual factors related to discriminatory experiences, and moderators of the effects of discrimination. We highlight the benefits of using EMA and daily diaries in the study of discrimination and biopsychosocial processes, and provide suggestions for future work on these associations. EMA data suggests that discrimination occurs more frequently than might be clear from survey research and is associated with poor mental health in daily life. Further, discrimination may be enacted through various means (e.g., verbal expressions, behavior), by a variety of perpetrators (e.g., spouses, friends), and in various settings (e.g., in the home, in public places) in daily life. This methodology has potential to facilitate our understanding of the dynamic temporal relationship between cognitive, behavioral, and emotional responses to discrimination and poor health outcomes in daily life.

What reduces sexual minority stress? A review of the intervention "toolkit"

Sexual orientation health disparities are rooted in sexual minorities' exposure to stress and challenges to effective coping. This paper reviews the "toolkit" of psychosocial interventions available to reduce sexual minority stress effects. A systematic search uncovered 44 interventions that both seek to reduce sexual minority stress at its source in unjust and discriminatory social structures as well as bolster sexual minorities' stigma-coping abilities. These interventions were implemented in a variety of contexts (e.g., education, health care delivery) and utilized heterogeneous modalities to create change (e.g., policy implementation, role-playing activities). They were designed to affect change across structural, interpersonal, and individual levels. The interventions reviewed here, while in early stages of efficacy testing, possess potential for meeting the needs and resources of mental and medical health care providers, policy makers, and other stakeholders who aim to lessen the burden of sexual minority stress and the health disparities it generates.

Testing a Social Cognitive Model of Workplace Sexual Identity Management

Lent and Brown proposed a social cognitive career self-management process model that extended prior social cognitive career theory (SCCT) content models to explain the conditions under which people will engage in career management behaviors (e.g., career exploration). We tested the SCCT self-management model in the context of workplace sexual identity management. The model hypothesizes that engagement in sexual identity management strategies in the workplace is facilitated by strong sexual identity management self-efficacy beliefs and positive outcome expectations for engaging in sexual identity management behaviors. The model also posits that additional person and contextual variables will influence engagement in sexual identity management behaviors directly as well as indirectly via self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectations. Using a sample of 152 sexual minority participants drawn from community Internet mailing lists, partial and full mediation models of workplace sexual identity disclosure were tested using theoretically relevant person input (i.e., concealment motivation) and contextual (i.e., workplace climate) variables. Results supported a partially mediated model suggesting that concealment motivation and workplace climate influence workplace disclosure directly as well as indirectly through self-efficacy and positive outcome expectations. Policy and social justice implications for the results are discussed and future research directions are considered.

Status and Power Do Not Modulate Automatic Imitation of Intransitive Hand Movements

The tendency to mimic the behaviour of others is affected by a variety of social factors, and it has been argued that such “mirroring” is often unconsciously deployed as a means of increasing affiliation during interpersonal interactions. However, the relationship between automatic motor imitation and status/power is currently unclear. This paper reports five experiments that investigated whether social status (Experiments 1, 2, and 3) or power (Experiments 4 and 5) had a moderating effect on automatic imitation (AI) in finger-movement tasks, using a series of different manipulations. Experiments 1 and 2 manipulated the social status of the observed person using an associative learning task. Experiment 3 manipulated social status via perceived competence at a simple computer game. Experiment 4 manipulated participants’ power (relative to the actors) in a card-choosing task. Finally, Experiment 5 primed participants using a writing task, to induce the sense of being powerful or powerless. No significant interactions were found between congruency and social status/power in any of the studies. Additionally, Bayesian hypothesis testing indicated that the null hypothesis should be favoured over the experimental hypothesis in all five studies. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for AI tasks, social effects on mimicry, and the hypothesis of mimicry as a strategic mechanism to promote affiliation.

THE EFFECT OF STIGMA ON CRIMINAL OFFENDERS' FUNCTIONING: A LONGITUDINAL MEDIATIONAL MODEL

Research has rarely considered criminal offenders' psychological responses to stigma, but these responses may significantly influence behavior after release from jail/prison. Jail inmates' perceived and anticipated stigma was assessed prior to release from jail/prison (N = 163), and outcomes were assessed one year post-release (N = 371). We hypothesized that perceived stigma would predict poor adjustment in several domains (i.e. recidivism, substance dependence, mental health symptoms, community adjustment) through anticipated stigma. Results showed that perceived stigma predicted worse community adjustment through anticipated stigma, and this varied by race. Results are explored from an interdisciplinary perspective.

‘Flying While Muslim’: Citizenship and Misrecognition in the Airport

Contemporary analyses of citizenship emphasise the importance of being able to occupy public space in a manner that does not compromise one’s sense of self. Moreover, they foreground individuals’ active engagement with others (e.g., being concerned about others) and the active exercise of one’s rights. We explore such issues through considering the psychological and social significance of having one’s various self-definitions mis-recognised in everyday social interactions. We do so through reporting interview and focus group data obtained from Scottish Muslims concerning their experience of surveillance at airports. Focussing on their accounts of how they orient to others’ assumptions about Muslim passengers, we consider what this means for our participants’ ability to act on terms that they recognise as their own and for their citizenship behaviours. Our analysis is organised in two sections. First, we examine the strategies people use to avoid painful encounters inside the airport. These include changes in micro-behaviours designed to avert contact, and where this was not possible, identity performances that are, in various ways, inauthentic. Second, we examine citizenship-related activities and how these may be curtailed in the airport. These include activities that entail the individual reaching out and making positive connections with others (e.g., through helping others) and exercising the right to criticise and complain about one’s treatment. Our analyses highlight the psychological and social consequence of identity misrecognition, and how this impacts on individuals’ abilities to act in terms of their own valued identifications and enact citizenship behaviours.

Influencing the World Versus Adjusting to Constraints

Although higher social class carries mental and physical health benefits, these advantages are less robust among members of racial and ethnic minority groups than among European Americans. We explore whether differential reactions to discrimination may be a factor in explaining why. Working-class and middle-class Latino American women engaged in an evaluative interaction with a European American woman who rejected them and held either prejudiced or unprejudiced attitudes. We examined how participants responded to this rejection by measuring neuroendocrine reactivity, executive functioning, and the affective content of their verbal responses during the interaction. Among middle-class Latinas, rejection from a prejudiced, compared to unprejudiced, out-group member was associated with less adaptive stress responses, greater cognitive depletion, and more feelings of uncertainty. In contrast, among working-class Latinas, neuroendocrine, cognitive, and affective responses were similar across the two sources of rejection. Results suggest that social class is an important moderator of responses to discrimination.

Singled Out as the Effect to be Explained

The description and explanation of intergroup differences tend to be framed in terms of how nonnormative (untypical and/or stigmatized) groups differ from normative groups rather than vice versa. Three experiments examined how this affects group members’ collective self-esteem. Single participants felt worse about being single when they read (Study 1) or wrote (Study 2) about how singles differ from coupled people than when they read or wrote about how coupled people differ from singles—although they mentioned more positive aspects of being single under the former comparative framing. In Study 3, left-handed participants indicated lower private collective self-esteem after writing about how left-handers differ from right-handers than after writing about how right-handers differ from left-handers. Thus, regardless of the specific characteristics that the comparison focused on, being marked as different and having to explain one’s group identity negatively affected members of nonnormative, but not members of normative groups.

"Discredited" Versus "Discreditable": Understanding How Shared and Unique Stigma Mechanisms Affect Psychological and Physical Health Disparities

In his classic treatise, Goffman (1963) delineates between people who are discredited-whose stigma is clearly known or visible-and people who are discreditable-whose stigma is unknown and can be concealable. To what extent has research in the past 50 years advanced Goffman's original ideas regarding the impact of concealability on stigma management strategies and outcomes? In the current article, we outline a framework that articulates how stigma can "get under the skin" in order to lead to psychological and physical health disparities. Further, we consider when and to what degree concealability moderates these effects, creating divergent outcomes for the discredited and discreditable. Does the stigmatized individual assume his differentness is known about already or is evident on the spot, or does he assume it is neither known about by those present nor immediately perceivable by them? In the first case one deals with the plight of the discredited, in the second with that of the discreditable. This is an important difference.- Goffman (1963, p. 4).

Friendship trumps ethnicity (but not sexual orientation): comfort and discomfort in inter-group interactions

An experience sampling study tested the degree to which interactions with out-group members evoked negative affect and behavioural inhibition after controlling for level of friendship between partners. When friendship level was statistically controlled, neither White nor Black participants reported feeling more discomfort interacting with ethnic out-group members compared to ethnic in-group members. When partners differed in sexual orientation, friendship level had a less palliating effect. Controlling for friendship, both gay and straight men - but not women - felt more behaviourally inhibited when interacting with someone who differed in sexual orientation, and heterosexual participants of both genders continued to report more negative affect with gay and lesbian interaction partners. However, gay and lesbian participants reported similar levels of negative affect interacting with in-group (homosexual) and out-group (heterosexual) members after friendship level was controlled. Results suggest that much of the discomfort observed in inter-ethnic interactions may be attributable to lower levels of friendship with out-group partners. The discomfort generated by differences in sexual orientation, however, remains a more stubborn barrier to comfortable inter-group interactions.

The costs of racism for marriage: how racial discrimination hurts, and ethnic identity protects, newlywed marriages among Latinos

The experience of racial or ethnic discrimination is a salient and severe stressor that has been linked to numerous disparities in important outcomes. Yet, the link between perceived discrimination and marital outcomes has been overlooked by research on relationship stressors. The current study examined this link and tested whether ethnic identity buffered the relation between discrimination and ratings of marital quality and verbal aggression. A sample of 330 Latino newlyweds completed measures of perceived discrimination, ethnic identity, spouse's verbal aggression, and marital quality. Each spouse's interviewer also independently rated marital quality. Dyadic analyses revealed that husbands' experience of discrimination negatively predicted wives' marital quality, but only for husbands with weak ethnic identity. Wives whose husbands had strong ethnic identity were buffered from this effect. Identity also buffered the relation between husbands' discrimination and verbal aggression toward their wives, and this effect mediated the association between discrimination, identity, and marital quality.