Contemporary heterosexism on campus and psychological distress among LGBQ students: The mediating role of self-acceptance.

Abstract

Contemporary heterosexism includes both overt and subtle discrimination. Minority stress theory posits that heterosexism puts sexual minorities at risk for psychological distress and other negative outcomes. Research, however, tends to focus only on 1 form at a time, with minimal attention being given to subtle heterosexism. Further, little is known about the connection between minority stressors and underlying psychological mechanisms that might shape mental health outcomes. Among a convenience sample of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and queer (LGBQ) college students (n = 299), we investigated the role of blatant victimization and LGBQ microaggressions, both together and separately, on psychological distress and the mediating role of self-acceptance. We conducted structural equation modeling to examine hypothesized relationships. Heterosexism was measured as blatant victimization, interpersonal microaggressions, and environmental microaggressions. Self-acceptance included self-esteem and internalized LGBTQ pride. Anxiety and perceived stress comprised the psychological distress factor. Our results suggest that students with greater atypical gender expression experience, greater overall heterosexism and victimization, and younger students experience more overall heterosexism, and undergraduates report more victimization. Microaggressions, particularly environmental microaggressions, are more influential on overall heterosexism than blatant victimization. Overall heterosexism and microaggressions demonstrated main effects with self-acceptance and distress, whereas victimization did not. Self-acceptance mediated the path from discrimination to distress for both overall heterosexism and microaggressions. Our findings advance minority stress theory research by providing a nuanced understanding of the nature of contemporary discrimination and its consequences, as well as illuminating the important role self-acceptance plays as a mediator in the discrimination-psychological distress relationship.

Resilience in LGB Youths: A Systematic Review of Protection Mechanisms

“…Among the 13 studies included, 12 were published in scientific journals (Baams, Bos & Jonas, 2014;Dunn, Gonzalez, Costa, Nardi & Iantaffi, 2014;Kaysen, Kulesza, Balsam, Rhew, Blayney, Lehavot & Hughes, 2014;Pearson & Wilkinson, 2013;Ploderl, Faistauer & Fartacek, 2010;Rivers & Cowie, 2006;Sandfort, Bos, Knox & Reddy, 2015;Spencer & Patrick, 2009;Walker & Longmire-Avital, 2013;Woodford, Kulick & Atteberry, 2015;Woodford, Kulick, Sinco & Hong, 2014;Woodford, Paceley, Kulick & Hong, 2015) and one was a doctoral dissertation (Benibgui, 2011). The studies were published between 2006 and 2015 but, in one of the studies (Pearson & Wilkinson, 2013), the data were collected in 1995 and 1996.…”

“…Several explanatory hypotheses can be considered, among which three are highlighted. In the first place, this result can be related with the age of the, college students, as they do not value marriage (yet) and may even consider it a heterosexist institution (Woodford et al, 2014). This hypothesis of valuation of the policies that are coherent with the participants' personal projects is sutained by the observation that protection measures at work promotes selfesteem of the college students.…”

“…LGBQ pride, on the other hand, in combination with selfesteem, was associated with lower anxiety and perceived stress (Woodford et al, 2014), also serving as a mediator of the effects of heterosexist harassments on anxiety and perceived stress (Woodford et al, 2015a). Having a salient LGBQ identity (medium and high scores) annulled the negative impact of microaggressions from the distal environment but led to greater anxiety in the face of proximal environmental microaggressions (Woodford et al, 2015b).…”

“…Concerning the specific personal protection mechanisms, three studies focused on aspects related to the LGB identity: identification with the LGB community (Sandfort et al, 2015), LGB pride (Woodford et al, 2014), salience of LGB identity (Woodford et al, 2015b), the use of coping strategies related to the sexual orientation (Kaysen et al, 2014) and the tendency to coming-out or omit one's sexual orientation (Dunn et al, 2014;Sandfort et al, 2015). The identification with the LGB community was neither associated, with nor did it predict, depression and anxiety (Sandfort et al, 2015).…”

“…As general personal protection mechanisms, the effects analyzed were related to self-esteem (Woodford et al, 2015a(Woodford et al, , 2014, anxious personality (Walker & LongmireAvital, 2013), religiosity (Walker & Longmire-Avital, 2013), perceived control, namely perceived competence to solve difficult situations and mastery (Dunn et al, 2014;Spencer & Patrick, 2009), general coping strategies (Kaysen et al, 2014), physical exercise (Woodford et al, 2015a) and variation in cortisol levels (Benibgui, 2011). Self-esteem was a significant predictor of depression, anxiety and physical health problems in the presence of heterosexist harassments (Woodford et al, 2015a).…”