Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research – Fall 2021

Psi Chi Journal of

Psychological Research FALL 2021 | VOLUME 26 | ISSUE 3

ISSN: 2325-7342 Published by Psi Chi, The International Honor Society in Psychology

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PSI CHI JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH FALL 2021 | VOLU ME 26, N U M BE R 3

EDITOR DEBI BRANNAN, PhD Western Oregon University Telephone: (503) 751-4200 Email: debi.brannan@psichi.org ASSOCIATE EDITORS JENNIFER L. HUGHES, PhD Agnes Scott College TAMMY LOWERY ZACCHILLI, PhD Saint Leo University ALBEE MENDOZA, PhD University of Delaware STEVEN V. ROUSE, PhD Pepperdine University KIMBERLI R. H. TREADWELL, PhD University of Connecticut ROBERT R. WRIGHT, PhD Brigham Young University-Idaho MANAGING EDITOR BRADLEY CANNON DESIGNER TAYLOR BROWN-STONE EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS CARLY BRESLIN REBECCA STEMPEL ADVISORY EDITORIAL BOARD GLENA ANDREWS, PhD George Fox University AZENETT A. GARZA CABALLERO, PhD Weber State University MARTIN DOWNING, PhD Lehman College ALLEN H. KENISTON, PhD University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire MARIANNE E. LLOYD, PhD Seton Hall University DONELLE C. POSEY, PhD Washington State University PAUL SMITH, PhD Alverno College

ABOUT PSI CHI Psi Chi is the International Honor So­ci­ety in Psychology, found­ed in 1929. Its mission: "recognizing and promoting excellence in the science and application of psy­chol­ogy." Mem­ ber­ship is open to undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, and alumni mak­ing the study of psy­chol­ogy one of their major interests and who meet Psi Chi’s min­i­mum qual­i­fi­ca­tions.

Psi Chi is a member of the As­so­cia­tion of Col­lege Honor So­ci­et­ies (ACHS), and is an affiliate of the Ameri­can Psy­cho­logi­cal As­so­cia­tion (APA) and the Association for Psy­cho­log­i­cal Science (APS). Psi Chi’s sister honor society is Psi Beta, the na­­tion­al honor society in psychology for com­mu­nity and junior ­colleges.

Psi Chi functions as a federation of chap­ters located at over 1,180 senior col­leg­es and universities around the world. The Psi Chi Central Office is lo­ cat­ ed in Chatta­ nooga, Ten­nessee. A Board of Directors, com­posed of psy­chol­o­gy faculty who are Psi Chi members and who are elect­ed by the chapters, guides the affairs of the Or­ga­ni­za­tion and sets pol­i­cy with the ap­prov­al of the chap­ters.

Psi Chi membership provides two major opportunities. The first of these is ac­a­dem­ic rec­ og­ni­tion to all in­duc­tees by the mere fact of mem­ber­ship. The sec­ond is the opportunity of each of the Society’s local chapters to nourish and stim­u­late the pro­fes­sion­al growth of all members through fellowship and activities de­signed to augment and en­hance the reg­u­lar cur­ric­u­lum. In addition, the Or­ga­ni­za­tion provides programs to help achieve these goals including con­ ven­ tions, research awards and grants competitions, and publication opportunities.

JOURNAL PURPOSE STATEMENT The twofold purpose of the Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research is to foster and reward the scholarly efforts of Psi Chi members, whether students or faculty, as well as to provide them with a valuable learning experience. The articles published in the Journal represent the work of undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty; the Journal is dedicated to increas­ ing its scope and relevance by accepting and involving diverse people of varied racial, ethnic, gender identity, sexual orientation, religious, and social class backgrounds, among many others. To further support authors and enhance Journal visibility, articles are now available in the PsycINFO®, EBSCO®, Crossref®, and Google Scholar databases. In 2016, the Journal also became open access (i.e., free online to all readers and authors) to broad­ en the dissemination of research across the psychological science community.

JOURNAL INFORMATION The Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research (ISSN 2325-7342) is published quarterly in one volume per year by Psi Chi, Inc., The International Honor Society in Psychology.

For more information, contact Psi Chi Central Office, Publication and Subscriptions, 651 East 4th Street, Suite 600, Chattanooga, TN 37403, (423) 756-2044. www.psichi.org; psichijournal@psichi.org.

Statements of fact or opinion are the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the authors alone and do not imply an opin­ion on the part of the officers or mem­bers of Psi Chi. ­ dvertisements that appear in Psi Chi Journal do not represent endorsement by Psi Chi of the A advertiser or the product. Psi Chi neither endorses nor is responsible for the content of thirdparty promotions. Learn about advertising with Psi Chi at http://www.psichi.org/Advertise COPYRIGHT

Permission must be obtained from Psi Chi to reprint or adapt a table or figure; to reprint quotations exceeding the limits of fair use from one source, and/or to reprint any portion of poetry, prose, or song lyrics. All persons wishing to utilize any of the above materials must write to the publisher to request nonexclusive world rights in all languages to use copyrighted material in the present article and in future print and nonprint editions. All persons wishing to utilize any of the above materials are responsible for obtaining proper permission from copyright owners and are liable for any and all licensing fees required. All persons wishing to utilize any of the above materials must include copies of all permissions and credit lines with the article submission.

COPYRIGHT 2021 BY PSI CHI, THE INTERNATIONAL HONOR SOCIETY IN PSYCHOLOGY (VOL. 26, NO. 3/ISSN 2325-7342)

FALL 2021 | VOLUME 26 | ISSUE 3

276 Editorial Transition—A Time to Say Goodbye

Debi Brannan

Psi Chi Journal Editor, July 2016–September 2021

278 P Is for Psychologist: Stimulating Interest in Psych Careers

Rihana S. Mason Urban Child Study Center, Georgia State University

283 The Effects of Divided Attention on Memory for Road Signs

Nathaniel L. Foster* and Gregory R. Bell Psychology Department, The College of Wooster

296 Minority Stress and Relationship Satisfaction Among Gay and Bisexual Men

Dustin K. Shepler*, Mackenzie R. Glaros, and Jared W. Boot Michigan School of Psychology

307 Emerging Adults’ Timing and Self-Efficacy for Transitional and Gradual Roles

Darcey N. Powell* and Stephanie Gaines Department of Psychology, Roanoke College

318 It Gets Better: Themes of Redemption in the Coming Out Narratives of LGBTQ+ Adults

Steven V. Rouse*, Lauren E. Chu, and Joshua A. Gash Social Sciences Division, Pepperdine University

330 The Indirect Effect of Worry on Daytime Sleepiness Among College Students

Alexis Hatcher1, Tiphanie G. Sutton1,2, and Matt R. Judah3* 1

Old Dominion University 2

Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology 3

Department of Psycholological Science, University of Arkansas

336 Need for Cognition and Women’s Implicit Associations: Breaking Stereotypes?

Sarah M. Olshan, Christine Vitiello*, and Kate A. Ratliff* Department of Psychology, University of Florida

347 Prejudice Toward Asian American Women: Clothing Influences Stereotypes

Angelina R. Conrow and Regan A. R. Gurung* School of Psychological Sciences, Oregon State University

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*Faculty mentor

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Editorial Transition—A Time to Say Goodbye Debi Brannan Psi Chi Journal Editor, July 2016–September 2021

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s I write this, I know that this will be my last issue as editor. It is hard to believe that, after 5+ years as editor, it is time for me to say goodbye to Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research. Before I go, I would like to take some time to recognize the accomplishments of the Journal and the people who made it possible.

The growth of the Journal is because of the amazing team that we have assembled and the path that our editor emeritus, Dr. Melanie Domenech Rodríguez, put in place for us. She set a foundation that allowed us to soar—and soar we did! The Journal is in its 26th year, and 70% of all citations have occurred in the past 5.5 years. Additionally, we have seen our i10-index go from 43 to 65, and we have had two of the largest issues in history; the Summer 2020 issue was 120+pages, with 12 empirical manuscripts.

Then, we almost doubled the page count (208 pages) with 20 articles in our Summer 2021 issue—a first in PCJ’s 25-year history! The associate editors, authors, and reviewers made this possible.

Other notable accomplishments is the Psi Chi Journal portal for authors. We have spent a significant amount of time creating a portal that is extremely supportive, inclusive, and helpful for all potential authors. Potential authors can come to the portal and find articles about how to publish, APA requirements, and p-hacking to name a few of the resources. We wanted the publishing process to be less stressful and confusing for everyone, so we focused a lot of attention on adding resources that could help the novice authors, as well as the more experienced ones. If you have not looked at our resources, I highly recommend them.

Additionally, over the past few years we expanded on our regular issues and added three special issues. This was a completely new endeavor for the Journal but well worth the extra work. This allowed us to focus on the Open Science Badges, psychology and work, and diversity. Associate editors, Dr. Steve Rouse and Dr. Jenny Hughes, stepped into the invited editor role to manage those issues—and they did a wonderful job. Each special issue was a huge success.

I have been exceptionally proud of my team during the COVID pandemic. They supported

authors and reviewers in every way they could. We all worked on keeping the lines of communication open in every possible way and keeping the rigorous standards of the Journal high. Although it was a difficult time for the world, this team shared ideas and laughter and made 2020–21 better just because we are all friends as well as colleagues.

My tenure has been a time of growth, new adventures, and refining the publishing process for the Journal. None of these accomplishments would have been done if it were not for the amazing team of associate editors. Drs. Steve Rouse, Jenny Hughes, and myself were all associate editors together early on, and as I took on the role of editor, their sup­ port, creativity, and ideas helped me get my footing and grow the Journal. I will forever be grateful.

Dr. Tammy Zachilli was another great addition to the team—her enthusiasm and drive to mentor and support authors is second to none. As the Journal grew, the support of the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee were amazing. They allowed us to bring on more associate editors to manage work levels and grow the team. The addition of Dr. Robert Wright broadened the scope of our knowledge base, and he brought with him his statistical training, which has been a huge asset. I am grateful that he took the AE position and to help make our team even better. With our submission rates going up drastically in the past two years, we brought on Dr. Kimberli Treadwell who has been so reliable and willing to help whenever it has been needed. Her creativity and enthusiasm has been a great benefit for the Journal. We also added a new associate editor, Dr. Albee Mendoza. Her passion for research and her attentiveness toward the authors and reviewers has been amazing. She jumped into the role as if she had been doing it her whole life.

This team is second-to-none.

Thank you, Taylor, for being so efficient, wonderful, and kind in layout. I know we make mistakes, but you quickly find them and fix them for us. We literally could not do this without you as Psi Chi’s Designer. Thank you.

I would be remiss if I did not take time to thank our Managing Editor, Bradley Cannon, and our Communications Director, Susan Iles, for not only

COPYRIGHT 2021 BY PSI CHI, THE INTERNATIONAL HONOR SOCIETY IN PSYCHOLOGY (VOL. 26, NO. 3/ISSN 2325-7342)

Brannan | Editorial Transition

being wonderful at their jobs but also great friends.

I always look forward to our bimonthly meetings to talk about the Journal and just to catch up, in general.

Bradley and Susan work quietly behind the scenes but there is no question that they have helped make the Journal what it is today. Thank you both for your time and commitment to Psi Chi and the Journal.

Lastly, I want to thank you, the reader, for supporting the Journal for so many years. This Journal has been my labor of love, and I am confident that it will continue to be that for the

next editor. I am grateful for the support that I have been given as the editor, and I will happily support the person who takes on my position. Thank you all!

Author Note. Debi Brannan, https://orcid.org/0000-00018636-7097, Organizational Leadership MA program faculty at Western Oregon University, Editor Emeritus for the Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Debi Brannan, Assistant Professor, Organizational Leadership Division, Western Oregon University, 345 N. Monmouth Ave. Monmouth, OR 97361.

Email: brannand@wou.edu

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P Is for Psychologist: Stimulating Interest in Psych Careers Rihana S. Mason Urban Child Study Center, Georgia State University

ABSTRACT. In this invited editorial I acknowledge the need for greater efforts to translate both the identity and purpose of psychologists. I present a two-pronged approach involving building equitable representations of psychologists and opting into the usage of inclusive curricula. The former can begin with updates to career profiles and commercially available media for younger students while the latter helps to sustain the diverse legacy for the field. The aim of this invited editorial is to call us to broaden the opportunities for the next generation to understand what is meant by P is for psychologist.

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timulating interest in psych careers takes a coordinated effort to translate both who we are (our identity) and what we do (our purpose) to others. It requires teachers in informal and formal settings to raise awareness of the full extent of what it means to become a psychologist.

When conducting research for my latest book Academic Pipeline Programs: Diversifying the Bachelors to the Professoriate (Byrd & Mason, 2021), I noticed that few career books designed for children included examples of careers in psychology. Instead of P standing for psychologist in the alphabetical listings of careers, it stood for pediatrician (Teachey, 2019), pilot (Sugar Snap Studio, 2018), or plumber, politician, photographer, and police officer (McDonagh, 2020). What steps can we take to increase the likelihood that the most diverse generation, Z, will also discover the richness in diversity within the discipline of psychology?

Communicating our identity as psychologists is complicated by the fact we serve in a variety of fields, roles, and settings. The variety of fields and roles are defined by the 50 psychology subdisci­ plines recognized by the American Psychological Association (APA, 2021). These subdisciplines are cross-cutting and oftentimes interdisciplinary, one quarter of which have nonlinear career pathways (APA, 2021) moving across education, government, and private sectors. For example, educational and developmental psychologists work in schools, hospitals, clinical practice, government agencies,

nonprofit organizations, etc. and collaborate with a variety of other disciplines (e.g., education, speech, language, pathology, sociology, linguistics, public health, public policy). The subdisciplines of edu­ cational and developmental psychology have even been described as transdisciplinary, “reach[ing] out of the academic ivory tower to provide real world outcomes” (Allen, 2021, p.1).

At the heart of translating why P stands for psychologist is the idea of representation, which the APA (n.d.) defines as: “[something] which stands for or signifies something else.” Cognitive psycholo­ gists study the intricate process of creating mental representations in semantic memory (Kumar, 2020). Mental representations for new concepts are formed by linking several sources of information together across multiple and varied encounters.

The process of generating an occupational profile for a psychologist might be analogous to the process of forming a new mental representation because we attribute meaning using both a persona and a role as defining attributes. The extent to which personas and roles link tightly to a specific exemplar of a psychologist depends on our set of experiences and the context in which these experiences occur. How can we ensure that the full spectrum of psychology as a discipline is translated well to our protégés? In this invited editorial article, I suggest an approach that involves building equitable representations of a psychologist and opting into the usage of inclusive curricula.

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Mason | P Is for Psychologist

Building Equitable Representations of a Psychologist Building equitable representations of who psycholo­ gists are and what contributions they make to the world is important to stimulate interest in the field.

In order to cast a wider net, so to speak, capturing an increased future variety of persons and perspec­ tives, we must diversify the profile of a psychologist and reimagine pathways into the discipline. This is essential as our identity and purpose can be difficult to articulate because the scope of what it means to study the mind and behavior is rather broad.

Resources designed to either attract new psycholo­ gists or explain the discipline to nonpsychologists are constrained by the multidimensionality of how psychologists are trained, the work settings in which we exist, and the social identities we are associated with.

Expanding Career Resource Profiles Expanding the profile of a psychologist requires the diversification of psychology career-related terminology and descriptions. Achieving this goal can help resources like O-Net Resource Center (https://www.onetcenter.org/) and the Occupational Handbook (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2021) classify psychologists in more equi­ table ways. For example, existing taxonomies used to build the career profiles for psychologists in the Occupational Handbook underrepresent the number of subdisciplines within psychology. Occupations such as marriage and family therapist have inde­ pendent profiles but can only be discoverable if one knows that this subarea exists. If you search for animal behaviorist, you are taken to a profile with a different occupational title, animal care and service worker. Further, if you search for cognitive or experimental psychologist, the top profile is the same as the general profile for a psychologist. Clearly, defaulting to this general occupational profile does not capture the nuanced and cross-cutting activities of all psychologists.

Commercially available career resources geared at precollegiate students translate the career profile of a psychologist into highly visualizable materi­ als. These visualizations are typically available in the form of posters, trading cards, history books, and coloring books. Posters contain a mixture of both a description of a subdiscipline and settings where psychologists work. Several free posters are in fact produced by the APA, with the tagline “Psychology—It’s More Than You Think,” which is intended to acknowledge the broad spectrum of

our discipline. These posters provide examples of psychologists’ profiles who study violence, engage in health promotion, and work with environmental issues. Because these posters are devoid of personi­ fied icons, they also are examples of unbiased rep­ resentations about who can become a psychologist.

In contrast, additional forms of commercial media (i.e., trading cards, children’s history books, coloring books), capitalize on the personification of career profiles by emphasizing the career-pathways of notable persons. The use of realistic images offer a way to illustrate STEM careers in a way that people see themselves represented. For example, Science Delivered (https://www.stemtradingcards. org/) sponsors a STEM Trading Card Project.

These trading cards include images of scientists, their career profiles, career setting, media links, and quotes. Gender, racial/ethnic, and ability diversity in addition to areas of scientific emphasis are also represented. A prime example would be Mamie Phipps Clark, a black, female psychologist who is featured in a black history book for children (Pellum, 2019).

Representations of psychologists extend to coloring books and coloring pages. QuiñonesSoto (2020) created a coloring book to depict the diversity among scientific disciplines. The included artwork elevates the profiles of female scientists including psychologists. In addition to the coloring book pages, her Women in Synapse artwork has been used on the cover of a special issue of The Journal of Neuroscience Research (Cortes, 2021) dedicated to women in neuroscience. Although these are impressive accomplishments, there remains room to embrace more subdisciplines and notable figures within these resources. My colleagues and l are adapting Savage (2020)’s coloring book and Collier and Mason (2011)’s workbook into a color­ ing workbook, which describes psychologists and other related professionals (e.g., speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, anthropolo­ gists). The coloring workbook will have descriptions of each occupation as well as images that are diverse in gender, race/ethnicity, and ability.

Reimagining Career Training Opportunities Much like there is need to expand the ways to communicate the diversity among the profiles of existing psychologists, there is also a need to reimagine our psychology career training oppor­ tunities. Since careers in psychology courses are not widely adopted at the associates degree (12%) or baccalaureate degree (39%) granting programs

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in psychology (Pfund et al., 2021), career training should also extend into informal learning set­ tings. These opportunities include participation activities like pipeline programs, science fairs, and conferences.

Academic pipeline programs support one’s academic progression from one level of the acad­ emy to another (Byrd & Mason, 2021). Students who participate in these programs perceive that their experiences support their academic readiness and career networking ability (Troutman et al., 2019), as well as shape their identity as a scientist in academic and industry settings (Gazley, et al, 2014). Academic pipeline programs are also an example of high-impact opportunities (Schwartz et al., 2018) for future psychologists to hear personal experiences of persons from similar backgrounds who have successfully navigated into careers (Byrd & Mason, 2021). This exposure to models of successful psychologists is particularly important for first-generation students and from historically underrepresented backgrounds (Herrmann, 2019).

Examples of academic pipeline programs that have succeeded at training those interested in psychology from historically underrepre­ sented backgrounds are the Ronald E. McNair Post Baccalaureate Achievement Program, The Leadership Alliance, National Institutes of General Medical Sciences Research Initiative for Scientific Enhancement (NIGMS-RISE) and Project Energize.

NIGMS-RISE has been demonstrated to influence students’ career choice and enrollment into graduate programs (Woodcock et al., 2016). Project Energize (Glenberg & Lanphier, 2021) was specifi­ cally designed to give psychology undergraduates who are underrepresented either by race/ethnicity, age, or ability status, the opportunity to learn more about opportunities beyond the classroom includ­ ing mentored research and graduate school.

Research also supports participation in intern­ ship opportunities (Halonen & Dunn, 2018; Schwartz et al., 2018), science fairs (Grinnell et al., & 2020; Lakin, et al., 2021; Paul et al., 2016), and conference attendance (Casad et al., 2017; Mason et al., 2021) as a workforce training option for future psychologists (Halonen & Dunn, 2018; Schwartz et al., 2018). Internships are also one of many high-impact opportunities that link well to career preparation when they include real-world applicable experiences (Halonen et al., 2018). For example, Entry Point!, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), offers undergraduate and graduate STEM

majors the opportunity to work with companies, engage in co-ops, or research opportunities. Entry Point! is also inclusive of persons with disabilities. If internships are advertised widely, offered in varying durations, and cocreated with students, they can drive students toward the field (Carlson, 2020).

Science fairs which attract middle and high school students can be thought of as a precursor to more discipline-specific conference presentations.

Several studies have supported this by demonstrat­ ing that these events help students both gain interest in science-related careers and understand the process of following the scientific method (Grinnell et al., 2020; Lakin et al., 2021). Paul et al. (2016) suggests that high school students’ sci­ ence fair participation transfers knowledge about experimentation and scientific concepts.

Conference attendance has also been dem­ onstrated to benefit psychology undergraduate students’ career preparation and psychosocial attitudes. Undergraduate students who attended an APA regional convention, for example, perceived their attendance as beneficial to enhancing their curriculum vitae (CV) and gaining confidence in their research and presentation skills (Mason, et al., 2021). Further evidence comes from histori­ cally underrepresented students who were shown to develop greater science self-efficacy and a sense of belonging in science after attending the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS; Casad et al., 2017).

Opting Into the Usage of Inclusive Curricula “Knowing where you came from is no less important that knowing where you are going” (deGrasse Tyson, 2003). Similar to the reasons for needing to build more equitable representations of psycholo­ gists in career profiles, using inclusive curricula in formal and informal settings helps to sustain the field by honoring all of the persons and perspectives that have forged psychology’s legacy. Even though the current demographics of our discipline indicate that psychologists are mostly white, female, and persons without disabilities (APA, 2020), individuals in other groups have made significant contributions to the field. If psychology curricula and teaching resources neither include these other groups, their research, nor provide rich representations of the intersections between our social identities (Worthington, 2012), barriers are created to the workforce recruitment and retention needed to tackle societal issues.

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Mason | P Is for Psychologist

Examples of psychologists discussed in class­ rooms influence how we perceive our discipline’s reality. Cramblet Alvarez et al. (2019) demonstrated that junior and senior psychology students recog­ nize more white pioneers than historically under­ represented pioneers (i.e., women and persons of color). Student recognition performance for pio­ neers was better for those who had taken a History of Psychology course compared to those who had not for pioneers from overrepresented groups (i.e., men, whites, white men, and white women).

However, taking a History of Psychology course was not related to the recognition of pioneers from historically underrepresented groups (i.e., women, women of color, men of color). Tracing the totality of our discipline’s historical roots is inte­ gral to sustaining a legacy that promotes just and equitable representation of research approaches and perspectives.

Unsurprisingly, psychology textbooks are also susceptible to the underrepresentation of historical figures from underrepresented groups. In order to diversify the content of textbooks, Trimble et al. (2003) provided suggestions of examples of psychologists that can be used by publishers and authors. Trimble et al. (2003) also provided a rich set of examples for the 20 most common topics covered in introductory psychology textbooks.

Cramblet Alvarez (2020) found further evidence that the contributions and narratives of women and persons of color were mentioned less in textbooks compared to those of men. As a result of these issues, several authors have called for the creation of more inclusive printed materials including textbooks (McKenzie, 2021) and journal articles (Roberts et al., 2020).

Grahe et al. (in preparation) answered this call by creating an additional teaching resource that deconstructs some of the earliest dissertations authored by women of color. This soon-to-be-pub­ lished book not only provides the biographies of these women, but goes further by drawing attention to the relevance of each woman’s scholarship and contextualizes it in modern times. Suggestions of how examples can be integrated into the classroom are also offered. New textbooks like Grahe et al.’s intentionally address several challenges with cur­ rent publications highlighted by McKenzie (2021) including the “underrepresentation of minority eth­ nic groups in text, images and references; descrip­ tions of people of color that exaggerate negative associations and stereotypes; missing stories of the achievements of people of color; and the idea that

social and economic disadvantages are the result of personal circumstances and decisions rather than systemic injustices and inequalities" (p. x).

Conclusion As we near the close of 2021, societal issues like the aftermath of natural disasters, international con­ flict, and a global health pandemic remind us that psychologists are in great demand. These societal issues continue to dictate movement toward the adoption of a diversity paradigm (Jones & Dovidio, 2018) that puts context as a focus of diversity related research, keeps our differences at the core, and acknowledges histories of diverse groups. There is room to progress toward the translation of our career profile and the dissemination of scholarship that might have otherwise remained obscured. We must not move forward without building equitable representations of who we are and clearly defining what we do in our careers to those outside of the discipline. Our ability to equip a workforce who can address the wholistic needs of all persons also depends on the decision to opt-in to the usage of inclusive curricula. Building and opting into inclu­ sion enhances how psychologists are represented to the world.

References Allen, K. A. (2021). The transdisciplinary nature of educational and developmental psychology. Educational and Developmental Psychologist, 38(1), 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1080/20590776.2021.1956868 American Psychological Association. (2021). Bridging education and career: Non-linear career pathways in psychology. https://www.apa.org/ workforce/publications/psycpathways/non-linear-career.pdf American Psychological Association. (2020). Demographics of U.S. psychologist workforce. [Interactive Data Tool].

American Psychological Association. (n.d.). Representation. In APA dictionary of psychology. https://dictionary.apa.org/representation Byrd, C. D., & Mason, R. S. (2021). Academic pipeline programs: Diversifying the bachelors to the professoriate. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12216775 Carlson, S. (2020, March 6). How internships reproduce privilege. The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Casad, B. J., Chang, A. L., & Pribbenow, C. M. (2017). The benefits of attending the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS): The role of research confidence. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(3), ar46. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.16-01-0048 Collier, C., & Mason, R. S. (2014). Thinking critically about your career in psychology. E-book. Retrieved from https://www.lulu.com/en/us/shop/drrihana-mason-and-dr-cherry-collier/thinking-critically-about-your-careerin-psychology/paperback/product-1nwerryp.html?page=1&pageSize=4 Cortes, C. J. (2021). Women in neuroscience. Journal of Neuroscience Research, 99(1), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1002/jnr.24653 Cramblet Alvarez, L. D., Leach, J. L., Rodriguez, J. L., & Jones, K. N. (2020). Unsung psychology pioneers: A content analysis of who makes history (and who doesn’t). The American Journal of Psychology, 133(2), 241–262. https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.133.2.0241 Cramblet Alvarez, L. D., Jones, K. N., Walljasper-Schuyler, C., Trujillo, M, Weiser, M. A., Rodriguez, J. L., Ringler, R. L., & Leach, J. L. (2019). Psychology’s hidden figures: Undergraduate psychology majors’ in(ability) to recognize our diverse pioneers. Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 24(2), 84–96. https://doi.org/10.24839/2325-7342.JN24.2.84 deGrasse Tyson, N. (2003, September). In the beginning. Natural History

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The Effects of Divided Attention on Memory for Road Signs Nathaniel L. Foster* and Gregory R. Bell Psychology Department, The College of Wooster

ABSTRACT. We examined incidental learning of road signs under divided attention in a simulated naturalistic environment. We tested whether word-based versus symbol-based road signs were differentially maintained in working memory by dividing attention during encoding and measuring the effect on long-term memory. Participants in a lab watched a video from the point of view of a car driving the streets of a small town. Participants were instructed to indicate whether passing road signs in the video were on the left or right side of the street while either singing the Star-Spangled Banner (phonological divided attention) or describing familiar locations (visuospatial divided attention). For purposes of analysis, road signs were categorized as word signs if they contained words (e.g., a STOP sign) or as symbol signs if they contained illustrations or symbols (e.g., a pedestrian crosswalk sign). A surprise free recall test of the road signs indicated greater recall for word signs than symbol signs, and greater recall of signs for the phonological divided attention group than the visuospatial divided attention group. Critically, the proportion of correct recall of symbol signs was significantly lower for the visuospatial divided attention group than the phonological divided attention group, p = .02, d = 0.63, but recall for word signs was not significantly different between phonological and visuospatial groups, p = .09, d = 0.44. Results supported the hypothesis that visuospatial information—but not phonological information—is stored in working memory in a simulated naturalistic environment that involved incidental learning.

Keywords: divided attention, working memory, incidental learning, free recall

D

uring a typical day, people encounter thousands of discrete objects in their environment. For example, when traveling by car, a person may notice a dentist’s office on one block, a local ice cream parlor on the next, and a stop sign at the end of the block. It is not necessary to remember every object or piece of information people come across, but they nevertheless retain some information as they interact and engage with the world (McLaughlin, 1965; Postman, 1964). Which cognitive processes determine whether information is remembered or forgotten? Furthermore, are the processes that operate in the laboratory, using artificial learning conditions, the same as those operating in the real *Faculty mentor

world? Researchers have argued for importance of ecological validity when studying mental processes (Hintzman, 2011; Neisser, 1997) and the role of working memory in maintaining information for further processing (Baddeley, 2000; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Baddeley & Logie, 1999; Miyake & Shah, 1999). Thus, the aim of the present study was to investigate the mechanisms of incidental learning in a simulated naturalistic environment that combines the control afforded to laboratory experiments with the familiarity of the real world.

We achieved this goal by measuring whether divided attention tasks influenced later free recall of road signs encountered in a point-of-view dashboard video by affecting the encoding and maintenance of

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information in working memory. Before revealing the specifics of the procedure, we first present an overview of research on intentional and incidental learning, working memory, and divided attention in simulated driving and traditional laboratory contexts.

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Incidental and Intentional Learning Research on learning and memory has been influenced greatly by William James (1892), who envisioned human experience as a stream of consciousness constantly shifting moment to moment. Consequently, memory was believed to be what remained after the conscious experience of something—either an external event or an internal thought—had passed. This view reflects what is now referred to as incidental learning, which is a method of experimental instruction that involves telling participants to engage with material using some orienting task but refrains from telling participants about the upcoming test. Any memory gains can be attributed to the processing afforded by the orienting task rather than to any explicit effort or strategy from the participant. Orienting task may involve instructing participants to indicate whether a word represents something living or nonliving (e.g., Nairne et al., 2013) or to indicate whether a word fits into a sentence provided by an experimenter (Craik & Lockhart, 1972; Craik & Tulving, 1975), which requires participants to consider list items’ semantic content. In one of the most famous incidental learning experiments, Craik and Tulving (1975) instructed participants to read a list of nouns and answer questions that focused attention on each noun’s structural, phonemic, or semantic features. Results indicated that, in a surprise memory test, participants showed superior recognition for the nouns from the sentence tri­ als compared to nouns from the phonemic and structural trials.

Incidental learning is contrasted with intentional learning, which involves explicitly instructing par­ ticipants to study the items because a memory test will be administered later on. When receiving inten­ tional learning instructions, participants engage study strategies that serve current goals, which can produce an up-to-date and adaptive memory system (Bjork, 1989; Foster & Sahakyan, 2011). Decades of laboratory-based basic research has uncovered many effective, intentional learning strategies such as creating an interactive image (Bower, 1972), creating interactive “links” of the referents of successive words in the list (Lorayne & Lucas,

1974; Morris & Stevens, 1974; Roediger, 1980), and self-testing (Pyc & Rawson, 2007; Roediger & Karpicke, 2006), just to name a few. A key piece of the incidental–intentional learning distinction for the present study involves understanding the role of attention during the study phase and, further, understanding how dividing attention affects later recall.

Divided Attention Effects in the Lab: Simulated Naturalistic Environments and Artificial Learning Conditions Although much of the work on incidental and intentional learning has been conducted in the laboratory using artificial learning conditions (Stanovich, 2007), recent discussions on the eco­ logical validity of traditional laboratory experiments have highlighted the value of research that seeks to break out of highly artificial learning environ­ ments and to understand human memory in the real world (Banaji et al., 1992; Hintzman, 2011; Neisser, 1997; Neisser & Libby, 2000). Thus, if the goal of research is to increase ecological validity while maintaining appropriate laboratory controls, one approach would be to include some aspect of the real world in an experimental, laboratory-based task that still gives the researcher control over extraneous variables. We refer to this approach as the simulated naturalistic environment, which has been adopted with success in a variety of domains of learning and memory such as context-dependent learning in outdoor environments (Godden & Baddeley, 1975), state-dependent learning using tetrahydrocannabinol (Eich et al., 1975), flashbulb memories of real-world events (Talarico & Rubin, 2007), category learning using naturalistic materials like paintings (Kang & Pashler, 2012; Kornell & Bjork, 2008), rocks (Nosofsky et al., 2019), birds (Morehead et al., 2017; Wahlheim et al., 2011), and driving simulations (Drews et al., 2008; Strayer & Johnston, 2001). Because we were interested in the effects of dividing attention on memory in a simulated environment (e.g., video of driving route), of particular concern to the present study is the work of Strayer and Johnston (2001) who used different simulated naturalistic environments to investigate the effects of dividing attention on driv­ ing performance. We describe this research next.

Driving simulation studies have shown that dividing attention affects driving performance in a simulated naturalistic environment. Strayer and Johnston (2001) approximated the cognitive demands of driving using a computer task where

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Foster and Bell | Divided Attention and Memory for Road Signs

participants were instructed to use a joystick to follow a cursor that moved around the monitor.

Periodically, the cursor would flash to the color green or red. When the cursor was green, par­ ticipants were instructed to do nothing. When the cursor was red, participants were instructed to push a button on the joystick. Critically, during this task participants were also asked to engage in a phone conversation or to listen to the radio. Results indi­ cated that, compared to the radio control, talking on the phone caused participants to miss the red cursor flash and to delay their button presses when they detected the red flash.

To approximate a true driving experience more closely, Drews et al. (2008) had participants sit in a driving simulator in a laboratory that allowed par­ ticipants to steer a wheel and apply gas and brakes while viewing monitors that displayed movement on a road with traffic. Participants were instructed to drive to an exit, exit a highway, and stop at a stop sign that followed. Results showed that participants who engaged in a simultaneous phone conversa­ tion during this task were more likely to drive out of the lane, follow cars more closely, and miss the exit compared to participants whose conversations were with “passengers” in the simulator with them.

These results indicate that it is not the conversation per se that disrupts driving performance but rather the shared attention between the driver and their conversation partner that affects performance.

Furthermore, when attention is shared because the partner is a passenger in the simulated car, performance is spared. When attention is split because the partner is not in the simulated car, performance suffers.

In addition to research demonstrating how dividing attention impairs performance on a simultaneous motor task, research using more artificial learning environments has also shown that dividing attention affects memory for study items on a later test (e.g., Craik et al., 1996; Craik et al., 2018; Fernandez & Moscovitch, 2000; NavehBenjamin & Brubaker, 2019; Naveh-Benjamin et al., 2007). In a classic study, Craik et al. (1996) had participants study lists of 15 words while fully attend­ ing to the lists or while engaging in a simultaneous task that involved pressing one of four keystrokes corresponding to the location of an asterisk in one of four visual locations. Results showed that average recall was impaired in the divided attention condition compared to the full attention condition, suggesting that long-term memory is impaired when attention is divided between an intentional learning

task and some secondary task.

Divided attention can also impair memory for incidentally encoded information. In an experi­ ment where participants studied paired associates under divided attention (i.e., discriminate three auditory tones) or under full attention (i.e., no tone task), Naveh-Benjamin and Brubaker (2019) found that cued-recall performance was worse in the divided attention condition even when participants incidentally encoded the words by way of a cover story involving experimenters telling participants that electrodes would be measuring their physiological response to the words, which precluded participants from intentionally study­ ing these words. Critically, the magnitude of the divided attention effect was not different between this incidental learning group and an intentional learning group instructed to study the words for a later test. These results suggest that the intent to learn does not change the damaging effects of divided attention on memory.

Dividing attention during learning in an artificial learning environment does not always affect memory for studied items the same way. For example, maintenance of verbal information in working memory is impaired if participants are required to produce verbal responses rather than motor responses. To illustrate this idea, Brooks (1968) had participants listen to sentences and then categorize each word in the sentence as a noun or non-noun. Participants responded either by saying “yes” or “no” for each word or by pointing to a “y” for yes or an “n” for no. Results showed that it took longer to provide a verbal response (i.e., to say “yes”) than to provide a motor response (i.e., to point to the “y”). Critically, for some trials partici­ pants were briefly shown a block letter (e.g., an F), and they had to hold the image in working memory and indicate, by saying or pointing, whether each vertex of the block letter was outside or inside. Time to provide a motor response was slower than time to provide a verbal response.

The results of Brooks (1968) and other dem­ onstrations of dissociations in working memory (Della Sala et al., 1999; Wasnard et al., 2015) can best be explained by evoking the Baddeley (2000) model of working memory (see also Baddeley & Hitch, 1974), which posits that working memory consists of four components, the central executive, the visuospatial sketchpad, the phonological loop, and the episodic buffer. The phonological loop is predominantly involved in the storage of temporary auditory and written information by way of an

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articulation mechanism where participants vocally or subvocally rehearse target verbal information (e.g., Baddeley & Hitch, 2019; Salamé & Baddeley, 1982). By contrast, the visuospatial sketchpad is predominantly involved in the storage, represen­ tation, and manipulation of mental images (e.g., Baddeley & Lieberman, 1980; Della Sala, et al., 1999). The episodic buffer allows information from long-term memory as well as perceptual traces to be temporarily activated, manipulated, and controlled by the central executive, which can then store this information in the phonological loop and visuospatial sketchpad (Baddeley et al., 2011; Logie et al., 2000; Rudner & Rönnberg, 2008). Thus, the extent to which divided attention affects processing in working memory depends on the characteristics of the divided attention task and the information stored in working memory. When a divided atten­ tion task requires use of the phonological loop, encoding of verbal information may be impaired.

Similarly, when a divided attention task occupies the visuospatial sketchpad, encoding of nonverbal information may be impaired. Information unaf­ fected by divided attention tasks is integrated into a multidimensional representation in the episodic buffer, which can then be encoded in, and retrieved from, long-term memory (Baddeley, 2000).

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The Present Study In the present study, we evaluated whether inci­ dental learning of sign information in a simulated naturalistic environment is influenced by divided attention tasks thought to affect maintenance of either phonological or visuospatial information in working memory (Baddeley, 2000; Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). Participants in the lab watched a video that displayed the point of view from the dashboard of a car as it drove through the streets of a small town. As the car passed road signs that contained words (word sign type) or pictures (symbol sign type), participants indicated on which side of the street the roadway signs were located, while simul­ taneously engaging in a divided attention (DA) task that involved singing the Star-Spangled Banner (phonological DA), or describing physical locations familiar to them (visuospatial DA). Participants then completed a surprise free recall test of memory for the road signs, which included indicating each sign they remembered seeing in the video along with an estimate of how many times they saw that kind of sign. If incidental learning in a simulated naturalistic environment relies on working memory by using rehearsal to maintain verbal information

in the phonological loop and imagery and saccadic control (Postle et al., 2006) in the visuospatial sketchpad, we expected two independent but complimentary effects. First, we predicted that, when the DA task relies on the phonological loop, encoding of additional verbal information would be impaired. Likewise, when the DA task relies on the visuospatial sketchpad, encoding of additional visual or spatial information would be impaired.

More specifically, we hypothesized that recall of symbol signs would be impaired in the visuospatial DA group compared to the phonological DA group, whereas recall of word signs would be impaired in the phonological DA group compared to the visuospatial DA group.

An alternative hypothesis was that symbol signs encountered incidentally in a simulated naturalistic environment would be encoded in the visuospatial sketchpad component of working memory as a result of the road sign task. Thus, efforts to occupy the visuospatial sketchpad would impair later recall of symbol signs. However, we did not expect the road sign task to prompt participants to continually rehearse the words on the word signs. If word signs were not actively rehearsed and maintained in the phonological loop (Baddeley & Lieberman, 1980; Beech, 1983), efforts to occupy the phonological loop would not impair later recall of words signs.

Method Participants and Design After receiving approval from the Human Subject Research Committee (Protocol #2019/10/41), we recruited 58 students from the psychology depart­ ment at The College of Wooster. Although we did not collect demographic information from the sample, we obtained demographic information from the student population during the year that the data were collected. The mean age of students at the college was M = 20, with 54% of the student body identifying as women, 60% identifying as European American, 9% as African American, 6% as Hispanic or Latinx, 4% Asian American, 16% identifying as international students, and 1% indicated “unknown” ethnicity. Participation was provided in exchange for partial course credit.

We used a 2 x 2 mixed design. The first of the two independent variables, roadway sign type, was a within-subjects variable and consisted of two levels: word signs and symbol signs. The second independent variable, divided attention group, was a between-subjects variable and consisted of two levels: phonological DA and visuospatial DA. The

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Foster and Bell | Divided Attention and Memory for Road Signs

dependent measure was the sign recall test, which measured recall of signs encountered along the route and the estimates participants made of how many instances of each sign they recalled from the experimental video.

Materials The present study included a video of a short driv­ ing route shown from the perspective of a person behind the wheel of a vehicle. The video, shot on a GoPro Hero4 video camera mounted in the vehicle, portrayed an authentic trip through various parts of a small town in the Midwest. The route, planned by the second author, went throughout the town and was designed to include various types of roadway signs. More specifically, 31 total roadway signs were encountered along this drive, 13 of them classified as “symbol signs” and 18 of them classified as “word signs.” A list of these signs is presented in Table 1. Every sign was coded and placed in one of these categories based on the predominant information acquired from each sign before the testing began. In addition, the environment was not manipulated in any way. Lastly, the location was selected to both provide an unfamiliar environment for the student participants and to maximize the likelihood that participants would not recognize anyone unintentionally captured in the filming of the video. We stress the importance of the novelty of the driving route because, like contemporary laboratory research that presents lists of English words in novel serial orders, we wanted the stimuli (i.e., road signs) to be recognizable but for the temporal context of sign presentation provided by the unique route itself to be novel and unfamiliar (Neisser & Libby, 2000; Polyn et al., 2009). As a result, no participants reported recognizing the route. The duration of the video was 15 minutes.

Participants viewed the video on a computer monitor. During the viewing period, participants engaged in the road sign task while a researcher administered one of two of the divided attention tasks. Upon completion, a writing utensil and sheet of paper were provided for the participant to complete the sign recall test. The road sign task, divided attention tasks, and sign recall test are detailed below.

Road Sign Task While viewing the video, participants used the keyboard to indicate which side of the street (left, right, or both) they saw road signs as they encoun­ tered them in the video. The left keyboard arrow represented the left side of the street, the right

keyboard represented the right side of the street, and the down keyboard arrow represented both sides of the street. Participants were instructed to ignore noncritical signs such as political yard signs (32), overhead signs (8), signs indicating specific identities of roads such as street names, highway numbers, etc. (15), and No Parking signs (7). The keyboard was unplugged and the responses to this task were not recorded. This task was included for the sole purpose of engaging the participant with the stimuli they would be asked to recall following Word TABLE 1 Word

List of Target Signs, Frequency, and Sign Type (Word/Symbol) Designation Sign

Frequency

Type

Amish buggy

1

Symbol

Left, straight, straight/right

1

Symbol

Right curve arrow

1

Symbol

S-curve to the left

1

Symbol

Stop sign ahead

1

Symbol

Traffic light symbol

1

Symbol

Cross walk with arrow

2

Symbol

Left, straight, straight, right

2

Symbol

Left, straight/right

2

Symbol

T-shaped with turn to the left

2

Symbol

T-shape with turn to the right

2

Symbol

Yellow/black diagonals

4

Symbol

Center lane left turn only

5

Symbol

Bridge ices before road

1

Word

End school speed limit

1

Word

Hidden drive

1

Word

Road narrows

1

Word

School speed limit ahead

1

Word

Truck route with arrow

1

Word

Weight limit

1

Word

Yellow 35 mph

1

Word

25 mph

2

Word

45 mph

2

Word

Hospital

2

Word

School 20 mph

2

Word

Stop here on red with arrow

2

Word

Through trucks prohibited

2

Word

50 mph

3

Word

Stop

3

Word

35 mph

7

Word

No parking

8

Word

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the completion of the video.

Divided Attention Tasks During the road sign task, participants were instructed to engage in either visuospatial DA or phonological DA. Participants in the visuospatial DA group were asked at various times during their drive to describe a location to the researcher.

The experimenter first asked participants to describe their dorm rooms, and if they finished this description before the drive was over, these additional locations were provided in a fixed order for all participants: the kitchen in the participant’s childhood home, the car the participant most often drives or rides in, and the dining hall at the college. Participants in the phonological DA group were instructed to sing or recite the lyrics of The Star-Spangled Banner from memory during the road sign task. If participants forgot a word, the researcher provided it for them. Participants recited the song as many times as needed to fill the duration of the video. During this phase, the experimenter rated participants’ engagement, independence, and fluency on the DA task on a scale of 1 (least engaged/independent/fluent) to 5 (most engaged/ independent/fluent). These three independent scales were designed by the second author to help describe the behavior of participants who might have, for example, struggled to produce responses (1 on fluency), needed help with the task (1 on independence), but otherwise showed enthusiasm and effort while engaged in the task (5 on engagement).

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Sign Recall Test Upon completion of the road sign task, participants were asked to recall as many signs as they possibly could from the video and estimate the number of times they saw each sign. Participants could recall a sign by either writing the words on the sign (e.g., “STOP” for a stop sign), by drawing the symbols a sign contained (e.g., a pentagon with two stick figures enclosed for school crossing), or by writing the name of a sign in order to identify the sign they were recalling (e.g., “yield sign”). Participants were asked to be as specific as possible in their recall and to avoid writing the generic name of a group or category of road signs; for example, a participant should recall “35 MPH,” instead of “Speed Limit Sign.” Lastly, participants were instructed to exclude from recall the same, noncritical signs as described during the road sign task.

Procedure Participants were told they would be participating

in a study investigating distracted driving and that their task was to indicate whether signs encoun­ tered on the video were on the left, right, or both sides of the street. The researcher demonstrated which keys corresponded to which decisions about sign location. The researcher did not indicate that participants’ memories would be tested on the road signs later on. Participants were then randomly assigned to either the visuospatial DA or phonological DA group and were provided with additional instructions for these tasks. The video was then presented and, during this phase, the researcher monitored participants to ensure they were engaged in both the sign task and the DA task.

After the video, participants received a blank sheet of paper and a writing utensil and were asked to complete the sign recall test. The researcher then recorded whether participants had a state-issued driver’s license and debriefed them.

Results Experimenter Report of Engagement, Independence, and Fluency We first compared the experimenter report of participants’ engagement in the DA task, how independent participants were at the task (i.e., how much help they needed from the experimenter with remembering instructions and performing the DA task), and the fluency with which participants produced their responses between the two DA groups. Although we collected these ratings as a way to monitor on-task behaviors, the reported analyses are post hoc given that we had no expecta­ tions about the results’ direction or significance.

Engagement ratings were not significantly different for the phonological (M = 4.46, SD = 0.95) and visuospatial (M = 4.50, SD = 0.51) DA groups, t(52) = 0.19, p = .85, d = 0.05. Independence ratings were also not significantly different for the phonological (M = 3.50, SD = 1.30) and visuospatial (M = 4.00, SD = 0.82) DA groups, t(52) = 1.68, p = .10, d = 0.46.

Fluency ratings were significantly greater for the visuospatial DA group (M = 4.11, SD = 0.79) than the phonological DA group (M = 3.42, SD = 1.39), t(52) = 2.25, p = .03, d = 0.61, suggesting that the ease with which participants produced their vocal responses was greater (medium effect size) for the group describing visuospatial locations than for the group singing the Star-Spangled Banner.

Recall Responses on the sign recall test were scored by comparing each sign description on a participant’s

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Errors of Frequency Estimates Because a sign might be encountered more than once on the video (e.g., a “STOP” sign appears on the corner of 1st and Main and then another one appears later on 2nd and Pine), and because par­ ticipants were asked to indicate the number of times they saw each recalled sign, we measured frequency

estimates for each of the signs correctly recalled by participants. We then calculated a frequency estimate error score by computing the absolute value of the difference between presentation frequency and estimated frequency for that sign.

For example, if two stop signs were encountered on the video but a participant reported seeing five stop signs, they would receive a frequency error score of three for their recall of the stop sign. Error scores were totaled across every correctly recalled sign for each participant, with lower scores indicating greater accuracy in sign frequency estimates. The minimum total score for frequency estimate error was 1 and the maximum total score was 34. The mean error score for frequency estimates was 10.36 (SD = 5.91). We conducted a sign type (word vs. symbol) by DA group (phonological vs. visuospatial) mixed ANOVA on mean frequency estimate error.

Alpha was set at .05, and the means are presented in Figure 2. Participants had larger error scores in the phonological DA group (M = 5.98, SD = 3.31) than in the visuospatial DA group (M = 4.38, SD = 2.35), as indicated by the significant main effect of DA, F(1, 56) = 4.53, p = .04, η2p = .075. Participants FIGURE 1

Mean proportion of correct sign recall

Mean Number of Signs Recalled as a Function of Divided Attention (DA) and Sign Type 1.00 0.90 0.80 0.70 0.60 0.50 0.40 0.30 0.20 0.10 0.00

Phonological DA Visuospatial DA

Word sign

Symbol sign

Sign type

FIGURE 2 Mean Error Score for Estimates of Sign Frequency as a Function of Divided Attention (DA) and Sign Type Mean error score for estimates of sign frequency

test to a coding sheet that listed all signs that were presented on the video. Scoring was blind, and a recalled sign was considered correct only if it matched the coding sheet. For each sign that was correctly recalled, the frequency estimate for that sign was also recorded.

Recall performance was computed for each participant by counting the number of signs cor­ rectly recalled and computing the proportion of recalled signs separately for the two sign types.

The minimum number of signs recalled was one, and the maximum number of signs recalled was eleven. The mean number of signs recalled across participants was 5.13 signs (SD = 2.14) and the mean proportion of correctly recalled signs was 0.17 (SD = 0.07). To test the effect of sign type and DA group on memory, we conducted a sign type (word vs. symbol) by DA (phonological vs. visuospatial) mixed analysis of variance (ANOVA) on mean proportion correct sign recall. Alpha was set at .05 for all analyses, and means for each condition are displayed in Figure 1. Sign recall was significantly greater for the phonological DA group (M = 0.18, SD = 0.07) than the visuospatial DA group (M = 0.14, SD = 0.07), as indicated by the significant main effect of DA on sign recall, F(1, 56) = 6.95, p = .01, η2p = .11. Participants also recalled a greater proportion of word signs (M = 0.20, SD = 0.08) than of symbol signs (M = 0.12, SD = 0.09), as indicated by the significant main effect of sign type on sign recall, F(1, 56) = 34.53, p < .001, η2p = .38. Lastly, the interaction between DA and sign type was not statistically significant, F(1, 56) = 0.51, p = .48, η2p = .01.

We next conducted two planned comparisons on mean proportion recall to test the a priori hypothesis that DA tasks should only interfere with encoding in working memory when process­ ing codes overlapped. Recall for symbol signs was significantly impaired in the visuospatial DA group compared to the phonological DA group, t(56) = 2.42, p = .02, d = 0.63. However, recall of word signs was not statistically different for the phonological DA group compared to the visuospatial DA group, t(56) = 1.90, p = .09, d = 0.44.

12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Phonological DA Visuospatial DA

FALL 2021 Word sign

Symbol sign

Sign type

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also had larger error scores for word signs (M = 8.45, SD = 5.66) than for symbol signs (M = 1.91, SD = 2.39), as indicated by the significant main effect of sign type, F(1, 56) = 60.03, p < .001, η2p = .52. The interaction was not statistically significant, F(1, 56) = 0.05, p = .82, η2p < .001.1 Extra-List Intrusions We tallied the number of signs that each participant reported seeing on their recall sheets that were not in the video. Overall, participants reported M = 3.19 (SD = 2.37) of these extra-list intrusions. Mean extra-list intrusions were significantly less than mean accurate sign recall, t(56) = 4.42, p < .001, d = 0.80. Extra-list intrusions were also not significantly different between the phonological DA group (M = 3.64, SD = 2.87) and the visuospatial DA group (M = 2.76, SD = 1.70), t(55) = 1.42, p = .16, d = 0.38.

Overall, although there were extra-list intrusions, they occurred significantly less often than true recall, and the two DA groups produced them at about the same rate.

Discussion The present study investigated whether incidental learning was affected by efforts to occupy dif­ ferent components of working memory using divided attention tasks in a simulated naturalistic environment. Prior research has shown that divid­ ing attention adversely affects driving simulation performance (Drews et al., 2008) and incidental learning of paired associates (Naveh-Benjamin & Brubaker, 2019). Furthermore, research has shown that dividing attention by occupying the phonologi­ cal loop affects verbal working memory, whereas dividing attention by occupying the visuospatial sketchpad affects nonverbal working memory (Baddeley & Lieberman, 1980; Brooks, 1968; Logie et al., 1990).

The results of the present experiment sup­ port the hypothesis that symbol sign information We also coded errors in terms of overestimates and underestimates of sign frequency (i.e., the direction of estimate errors). We did not have an a priori prediction about the direction of participants’ estimates. However, we report these results in Table 2. To summarize, across both DA groups, over- and underestimates of sign frequency judgments were not significantly different at each level of sign type. We also performed a mixed ANOVA on directional estimates with DA group (phonological vs. visuospatial), sign type (word vs. symbol) and estimate direction (over vs. under) as factors. DA group, F(1, 56) = 4.48, p = .04, η2p = .07, and sign type, F(1, 56) = 58.58, p < .001, η2p = .51, were the only two significant factors. The sign type by estimate direction interaction was not significant, F(1, 56) = 1.78, p = .19, η2p = .03. The estimate direction main effect and the remaining interactions were also not significant, Fs < 1.

1

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encountered incidentally in a simulated naturalistic environment would be maintained in the visuo­ spatial sketchpad component of working memory because occupying the visuospatial sketchpad adversely affected memory for nonverbal, symbolic information (i.e., symbol signs). Interestingly, occupying the phonological loop did not adversely affect memory for verbal information (i.e., word signs). If anything, the opposite was true, namely, that word sign recall was numerically lower for the visuospatial DA group than the phonological DA group, although this difference was not statisti­ cally significant. Although the DA manipulation produced medium effect sizes for mean differ­ ences in word sign recall (d = 0.44, nonsignificant) and symbol sign recall (d = 0.63, significant), the results overall provide an interesting pattern of data when considering the primary and alternative hypotheses proposed in the introduction. The primary hypothesis stated that incidental symbol signs are maintained in the visuospatial sketchpad and incidental verbal signs are maintained in the phonological loop. Here, we expected visuospatial DA to impact symbol sign memory, and the medium effect size of d = 0.63 supports this claim. We also expected phonological DA to impact verbal sign recall. The medium-sized effect (d = 0.44) that we observed was not significant and was in the opposite direction from what would be predicted by the pri­ mary hypothesis. By contrast, the results more fully support the alternative hypothesis, which states that incidentally encoded symbol signs are maintained in the visuospatial sketchpad, but incidentally encoded verbal signs are not maintained in the phonological loop.

The results of the current investigation are con­ sistent with research suggesting that maintenance of information in the phonological loop depends on articulation (Salamé & Baddeley, 1982) by way of participants rehearsing target memory items, whereas encoding of information in the visuospatial sketchpad does not require articulation (Baddeley & Lieberman, 1980; Beech, 1983). Thus, to observe impairment in word signs as a result of a phono­ logical DA task, we must assume that participants are rehearsing road signs. Because the road sign task is an incidental learning task, it is not likely that participants were rehearsing words on the word signs to help them remember these signs.

Traditionally, orienting tasks have been shown to boost memory when they require participants to consider the semantic content of study items (Craik & Tulving, 1975). Even in the absence of rehearsal,

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Foster and Bell | Divided Attention and Memory for Road Signs

these tasks benefit long-term memory. Thus, we must also acknowledge that our road sign task most likely did not promote semantic processing of target signs—and thus a reduced likelihood of rehearsal of the words on these signs—because indicating which side of the street a sign is located most likely does not require the participant to process the semantic content of the sign.

Participants correctly recalled more word signs than symbol signs, indicated by the significant main effect of sign type task. This effect may be due to serial-order processing within the phonological loop. This interpretation aligns with the idea that component systems in working memory are predominantly isolated from one another and that verbal information processed by the phonological loop is assigned a serial position in a list. Once organized into a list, the information can be more easily recalled using each item’s correct place and order in the group of items (Baddeley & Hitch, 2019; Page & Norris, 1998). Serial-order process­ ing could provide a plausible explanation for the higher recall of verbal signs due to the progressive nature of the video clip viewed by participants.

Because the verbal information in the video was acquired in a serial order as the simulated drive played, it could have been recounted during the recall test using serial-order processing, allowing for greater recall. This explanation is in conflict with the hypothesis that incidental learning does not involve rehearsal. However, participants might have encoded verbal signs incidentally, without rehearsal, and later reconstructed the serial order of signs during the recall phase.

Participants correctly recalled more signs when engaged in a phonological DA task than a visuospatial DA task, indicated by the significant main effect of DA task on recall. This finding may be the result of the familiarity participants had with the Star-Spangled Banner. This is not likely to be a strong explanation, however, in part due to the results showing that participants in the phonologi­ cal DA group were on average provided hints about the song M = 7.41 (SD = 5.07) times during the study phase, indicating that participants in this group sometimes struggled to remember the next word of the song. An alternative explanation for the significant main effect of DA task is that tasking the phonological loop might have required work­ ing memory to rely more heavily on visuospatial sketchpad. This might have inadvertently benefited overall memory for signs in the task given that signs in general are predominantly visuospatial. This

interpretation aligns with the conceptualization of working memory that considers the component systems to be predominantly isolated components that process their own unique forms of informa­ tion and utilize different methods of processing (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974; Baddeley & Hitch, 2019; Baddeley & Logie, 1999; Baddeley et al., 2019).

Differences in recall between the phonological and visuospatial DA groups might have emerged because the visuospatial DA required participants to both visualize and describe their physical spaces, thus requiring participants to perform two tasks.

We do not think this is a likely explanation for the following reasons. First, although both DA tasks require a verbal response, the phonological DA task is inherently a verbal memory retrieval task (i.e., participants are retrieving lyrics from long-term memory), whereas the visuospatial DA task is inherently a visuo-spatial memory task (i.e., participants are retrieving visual and spatial images from long-term memory). Verbal output is then performed by both groups. Second, we reasoned if verbal output in the visuospatial DA group makes this task more challenging, leading to impaired recall, removing the most verbally fluent partici­ pants from the analysis should boost recall in the visuospatial DA group and eliminate the DA effect.

To test this, we compared DA groups on memory for signs after removing n = 11 participants from the visuospatial DA group who each received scores of 5 on the fluency scale. Despite this alteration, mean proportion correct sign recall was still significantly greater for the phonological DA group (M = 0.19 SD = 0.07) than the visuospatial DA group (M = 0.15, SD = 0.08), t(46) = 2.06, p = .04, d = 0.61. We further reasoned if visuospatial DA imposed an unintentional verbal demand on all participants, fluency ratings should be negatively associated with recall in the visuospatial DA group. The data did not support this assertion either because the Pearson’s r correlation coefficient between fluency ratings and sign recall was not significantly negative, r(28) = −0.01, p = .97. These analyses do not support the hypothesis that recall differences between DA groups emerged because visuospatial DA required participants to both visualize and describe their physical spaces.

The analysis of the sign frequency estimates revealed an interesting pattern. In particular, participants made more errors in their frequency estimates of word signs than symbol signs. Errors of frequency estimates were also greater in the phono­ logical DA group than the visuospatial DA group.

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Although we did not have an a priori hypothesis concerning these outcomes, we speculate that par­ ticipants experienced a recall-frequency estimate tradeoff such that when resources were allocated to engage in accurate encoding and retrieval of signs, fewer processes were left to encode and retrieve sign frequency. This form of recall-estimate tradeoff may be akin to item-associative memory tradeoff in long-term memory (Anderson & Bower, 1972). If this were the case, we might expect to find a positive correlation within participants between sign recall and frequency estimate errors. Indeed, the Pearson’s r correlation between mean sign recall and errors of frequency estimates was significant and positive, r(58) = .34, p = .009, suggesting that the more signs a participant recalled, the less accurate they were at remembering how often they encountered those signs.

Measuring Road Sign Task Performance We note a few important limitations to the cur­ rent investigation. Due to complexities related to presenting the dashcam video to participants over the computer, we were unable to record responses during the primary task of identifying road signs.

The failure to record performance during the road sign task may complicate our interpretation of the recall results. One the one hand, if participants had not fully engaged in the identification of road signs during the study phase, correct recall might reflect pure guessing (see our discussion of guessing in the following paragraph). If we had recorded par­ ticipants’ left and right keypresses, we could have conducted a conditional analysis of recall based on these keypresses and obtained a measure of memory that is dependent on how well participants performed on the road sign tasks. We could then analyze individual differences in the road signs and TABLE 2 Mean Directional Error Scores for Estimates of Sign Frequency as a Function of DA Group and Sign Type Overestimates

Underestimates

t

df

p

Word sign

4.62 (6.12)

4.69 (3.43)

0.05

28

.96

Symbol sign

1.76 (2.85)

0.86 (1.38)

1.35

28

.19

Word sign

3.21 (3.61)

4.31 (3.60)

1.02

28

.32

Symbol sign

0.72 (1.77)

0.48 (1.06)

0.61

28

.55

Phonological DA

Visuospatial DA FALL 2021 PSI CHI JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

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Note. DA = divided attention. Standard deviations are in parenthesis.

test weather accurate sign identification positively correlated with later surprise recall of signs. The effect of DA group on sign recall may change depending on accuracy for target sign identifica­ tion, and participants who are more successful in the road sign task should show a greater potential to incidentally encode target signs and thus be more likely to be affected by the visuospatial DA task.

Without road sign task performance, there is no way for us to test these hypotheses. On the other hand, participants that missed signs on the road sign task but later showed correct recall for these signs might not reflect guessing but might simply reflect covert encoding in the absence of overt motor response (Posner, 1980). Here, participants might have suc­ cessfully encoded the road signs, but they might not have indicated the correct left or right keypress response. This account complicates the usefulness of a recall analysis that is conditionalized upon per­ formance in the road sign task. Regardless, future research should replicate the current procedure with the added feature of recording responses in the road sign task to, at the least, understand the dependencies between encoding and retrieval in a simulated naturalistic environment.

Can Guessing Explain the Results?

A second limitation involves assessing whether the recall results can be explained by guessing. For example, when testing memory for highly familiar information such as road signs, there may be concern that participants are simply guessing signs they are familiar with, and that they do not neces­ sarily remember seeing in the experiment. Indeed, research on the availability heuristic has established the powerful role that familiarity has on frequency judgments (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973). Although we do not claim that absolutely no guessing occurred in the current study, we are not convinced that guessing was the primary driver of successful recall. Evidence against a guessing explanation comes from our analysis of the frequency estimate errors of word signs and symbol signs. If participants were successful at sign recall simply because of guessing, we would have expected a greater number of overestimation errors, especially among the sign type for which participants showed the greatest number of errors overall (i.e., word signs). However, as shown in Table 2, this was not the case. There was no significant difference between errors of overestimation versus errors of underestimation, and the sign type by estimate direction interaction was not significant, suggesting that the difference

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Foster and Bell | Divided Attention and Memory for Road Signs

between over- and underestimates was the same for word signs as for symbol signs.

Nontarget signs (e.g., road name signs) might have added additional distractions to participants as they searched the scene for target signs. The frequency of these signs is noted in the Method sec­ tion. Because we wanted to simulate a naturalistic environment, having nontarget signs in the video is an important feature because dynamic visual scenes are, by definition, noisy and we wanted our video to be appropriately dynamic and naturalistic. However, attention might have been further divided by the presence of nontarget signs in the video. As such, it is currently unclear how attention was affected by these stimuli. Future research that measures participants’ responses to sign locations can further measure the false alarm rates that results from attending to these signs.

Difficulty of Divided Attention Tasks Another important limitation to consider is that differences in the difficulty of the DA tasks might have caused or contributed to the recall results, namely, worse recall for the visuospatial DA group than the phonological DA group. Unfortunately, we did not directly measure difficulty of the DA tasks.

We did, however, rate the fluency of participants’ responses during these tasks. If the difficulty of producing responses in the DA tasks (i.e., lower fluency ratings) is indicative of a difficult task, and if difficult DA tasks negatively impacts later memory, we might expect the phonological DA group to have greater fluency ratings than the visuospatial DA group. However, the opposite was true. Fluency ratings were greater for the visuospatial DA group than the phonological DA group. Differences in DA task difficulty might have also affected how engaged and independent participants are. Contrary to this hypothesis, engagement and independent ratings were not different between the two DA groups.

Another possible difference between the DA groups is the stress induced by the singing portion of the phonological DA task. More specifically, the phonological DA participants might have experienced more stress from requests to sing than those asked to describe their dorm rooms (Reschke-Hernandez et al., 2017). Although it is possible that requests to sing increased stress in the phonological DA group, this group actually remembered more signs overall than the visuospa­ tial DA group, which suggests if increased stress occurred, it did not affect incidental learning.

Future research should find ways to measure stress

in this kind of task, as well as to track how much singing or reciting each participant engaged in.

Although we do not have a record of who in the phonological DA condition elected to sing and who elected to recite the lyrics, we can speculate that deciding to do one versus the other did not adversely disadvantage this group compared to the visuospatial group. We again reference the lack of a significant difference in engagement scores for the two groups. If pressure to sing (or recite) had reduced participants’ engagement in the task—and as a result, increased their divided attention—we would have expected lower engagement ratings for the phonological than visuospatial groups. We did not observe this difference.

Finally, we entertain the possibility that expe­ rience with driving might have moderated the relationship between divided attention and memory for road signs. We did not obtain a measure of driv­ ing experience or driving aptitude to fully address this concern. However, we did ask participants whether they have a driver’s license. Importantly, n = 5 participants reported not having a license, and when license (have versus do not have) is entered as a factor into our analyses, it does not interact with the other variables, F < 1.

The Role of Rehearsal and Passive Versus Active Driving Future research should examine how an intentional learning instruction affects memory of road signs in simulated naturalistic environments like the one used in the present study. Here, participants must be told in advance that their memory of road signs will be tested later on. Furthermore, the role of rehearsal could be tested directly by asking participants to repeat the names of the signs aloud as they appear with the purpose of improving their memory. If participants engaged rehearsal of word signs, we would predict that phonological DA tasks should interfere with this learning compared to visuospatial DA tasks, unlike the results of the present experiment.

Future research can test whether the results of the present experiment are replicated when participants operate a vehicle simulation versus passively viewing the driving scene. The view that attention is a limited resource (Wickens, 1980, 1984) would predict the same pattern of results that we observed but perhaps with larger effect sizes.

Although the results of the present study suggest that sign information is more likely to be encoded in the visuospatial sketchpad than the phonological

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loop, further evaluating the mechanisms of work­ ing memory in contexts that simulate real-world environments has the potential to generalize outcomes in addition to understanding how these results operate in basic and applied settings. It is worth noting that we did not collect demographic data from the sample, although we did report demographic data from the College of Wooster student population. Not knowing the age, gender, and ethnicity of the sample diminishes how well we understand the generalizability of the results, which may limit efforts to understand operations of work­ ing memory in the real-world driving situations.

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Authoer Note. Nathaniel L. Foster https://orcid.org/00000002-6250-6299 We have no conflicts of interest. This project was conducted to fulfill the requirements of Senior Independent Study for the second author.

Correspondence should be addressed to Nathaniel L. Foster, Morgan Hall, The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, 44691. Email: nfoster@wooster.edu.

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Minority Stress and Relationship Satisfaction Among Gay and Bisexual Men Dustin K. Shepler*, Mackenzie R. Glaros, and Jared W. Boot Michigan School of Psychology

ABSTRACT. For gay and bisexual men, relationship status and relationship satisfaction have been linked to longevity, positive mental health, and life satisfaction. Factors that contribute to relationship satisfaction among gay and bisexual men were examined within the framework of Meyer’s (2003) minority stress model. Ninety-three gay, bisexual, and pansexual men who ranged in age from 18 to 60 years old (M = 32.14, SD = 10.01) were recruited in person and through Amazon Mechanical Turk to complete measures related to minority identity processes, identity characteristics, and relationship satisfaction. Most men were White (80.6%) with a high education level (58% had completed at least a bachelor’s degree). Multiple linear regression results were significant and indicated that 4 variables (identity concealment, uncertainty, centrality, and affirmation) explained about 40% of the variance in relationship satisfaction, F(6, 86) = 9.42, p ≤ .001 Findings suggest that Meyer’s model can be extended from explaining mental health to understanding relationship satisfaction. Results also draw attention to the role of identity affirmation and identity centrality, a somewhat unique contribution to this area of inquiry.

Keywords: relationship satisfaction, minority stress, identity affirmation, identity centrality, sexual minority men

M

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uch of what is known about relationship functioning is drawn on observations made from presumably heterosexual couples. Extrapolation of such findings to relationships in which gay and bisexual men engage (both same and different-sex relationships) is problematic given that experiencing minority stress may affect relationship dynamics (Mohr & Fassinger, 2006). In the present study, we sought to understand how minority stress impacts relationship satisfaction for gay and bisexual men.

Minority stress is described as distress caused by prejudice and stigmatization of people in minority groups due to their minority status (Meyer, 2003; Meyer et al., 2008). Riggle and Rostosky (2012) added that “minority stress is a chronic or long-term social stress, over and above the general stressors of daily life. Minority stress leads to the negative effects on health and wellbeing that are caused by social stigmatization”

(p. 10). According to minority stress theory, les­ bian, gay, and bisexual individuals have unique risk factors related to experiences of discrimination and anticipated rejection that, if not ameliorated, can lead to internalized homonegativity and identity concealment (Rostosky et al., 2007). Ultimately, this can result in gay and bisexual men experienc­ ing social alienation and disproportionately high prevalence of psychiatric disorders compared to their heterosexual peers (Meyer, 2003; Sanders & McCartney Chalk, 2016). For example, Bruce et al. (2015) found that experiencing stigma, inter­ nalized homonegativity, and concealment stress contributed to major depressive symptoms. The minority stress model also appears to be applicable to understanding relationships among those who experience sexual identity-related stigma Minority stress may affect the degree to which gay and bisexual men internalize stigma, which may lead to fears of intimacy and decreased

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relationship functioning (Szymanski & Hilton, 2013). In other words, when gay and bisexual men are successful in managing minority stress, they are also more successful in meeting partners’ needs and maintaining healthy relationships. Being in a satisfying relationship may allow access to support in navigating the impact of minority stress (Cao et al., 2017). For some gay and bisexual men (and lesbian and bisexual women), however, being in a romantic relationship may lead to higher levels of stigma and discrimination, which generally cor­ responds to lower relationship satisfaction (Mohr & Daly, 2008; Mohr & Fassinger, 2006; Otis et al., 2006). The interplay among identity processes and relationship functioning is complex.

In the present study, we considered how variables identified in the minority stress model may explain variance in relationship satisfaction.

Conceptually, we relied on Meyer’s (2003) minority stress model and focused on those who identify as gay, bisexual, or pansexual. In particular, we sought to understand how managing proximal minority stress processes and holding characteristics of minority identity impacts relationship satisfaction.

In order to operationalize Meyer’s model, we relied on work by Mohr and Kendra (2011).

Informed by the work of Meyer and others, Mohr and Kendra identified identity processes shared by lesbian, gay, and bisexual people and developed a psychometrically sound way to measure these shared processes. In the present study, we exam­ ined six identity processes that reflect concepts identified by Meyer (2003) and that can be assessed using Mohr and Kendra’s scale. Specifically, Meyer discussed internalized homophobia, expecta­ tions of rejection, and (identity) concealment as proximal stressors, which correspond to the identity processes described by Mohr and Kendra (2011): internalized homonegativity, acceptance concerns, and concealment motivation, respectively. Furthermore, Meyer identified three characteristics of minority identity: prominence, valence, and integration, which are similar to Mohr and Kendra’s identity processes: identity centrality, identity affirmation, and identity uncertainty, respectively.

Proximal Minority Stress Processes According to Meyer (2003), the proximal minor­ ity stress processes are personal and subjective because they are factors that are influenced by individual perceptions and appraisals. Here, we examine the three identity processes related to Meyer’s proximal stressors.

Internalized Homonegativity The most well-researched aspect of minority stress is internalized homophobia, more often called internalized homonegativity. Internalized homonegativity has been described as the internal denial of a person’s own lesbian, gay, bisexual sexual identity (Mohr & Kendra, 2011). Many lesbian, gay, and bisexual identity development theorists have explained that confronting internalized homonega­ tivity is not only part of the process in developing an identity, but is key in having a healthy self-concept later in life (Cass, 1979; Fingerhut et al., 2005; Rowen & Malcolm, 2003). Those who engage in self-stigmatization may struggle with chronic inter­ nalized homonegativity (Meyer, 2003; Szymanski et al., 2001), which has been shown to contribute to reduced relationship quality, decreased relationship attraction, and poorer relationship satisfaction (Elizur & Mintzer, 2003; Frost & Meyer, 2009; Mohr & Fassinger, 2006; Otis et al., 2006; Szymanksi et al., 2008; Thies et al., 2016).

Internalized homonegativity has been inversely associated with relationship quality; research­ ers have identified mechanisms that affect this association. Feinstein et al. (2018) reported that internalized homonegativity and stress were associ­ ated with decreased relationship quality, but only for couples in longer relationships. Internalized homonegativity also correlates positively with psy­ chological distress (Feinstein et al., 2018; Rowen & Malcolm, 2003; Thies et al., 2016), which negatively affects relationship quality (Frost & Meyer, 2009; Thies et al., 2016). Kamen et al. (2011) found that internalized homonegativity was not directly related to same-sex male relationship satisfac­ tion, although Thies et al. (2016) found that the associations between internalized homonegativity, relationship quality, and depressive symptoms were stronger for gay men than for lesbian women, and Feinstien et al. (2018) reported higher levels of internalized homonegativity among gay men than lesbian women. These findings draw attention to the importance of gender and relationship status in the experience and management of internalized homonegativity, suggesting that the association between internalized homonegativity and relation­ ship quality may be moderated by gender.

Acceptance Concerns Acceptance concerns refer to the awareness that a lesbian, gay, or bisexual person has about the possibility of being stigmatized (Mohr & Kendra, 2011). Acceptance concerns have been associated with a greater risk for depressive symptoms and

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suicidal ideation (Lewis et al., 2003; Meyer, 1995) and are strongly linked to mood and relationship well-being (Mohr & Kendra, 2011). The available research has indicated that higher levels of accep­ tance concerns are associated with lower relation­ ship quality (Mohr & Fassinger, 2006; Rostosky et al., 2007). Rostosky et al. (2007) found that acceptance concerns, such as fear of rejection, led people to conceal romantic behaviors to avoid being perceived as a couple, which caused concerns in the relation­ ship that would lead to decreased relationship satisfaction. This position is further informed by findings regarding concealment motivation.

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Concealment Motivation Gay and bisexual men manage the degree to which they disclose their sexual identity to others, or how “out” they are in their daily lives (Todosijevic et al., 2005). In contrast to previous research that focused on “outness” (Coleman, 1982; Fox, 2003), concealment motivation may be a more suitable explanatory construct regarding the relationship between identity disclosure and other factors (Jackson & Mohr, 2016).

Concealment motivation is described as the concern and/or motivation to protect the privacy of one’s sexual minority identity (Mohr & Kendra, 2011) and is viewed as a minority stressor (Frost et al., 2007). Higher levels of concealment motivation guide lesbian, gay, and bisexual people to remain private about their romantic relationships (Mohr & Kendra, 2011). This tendency to remain private about identity and romantic partners can lead to decreased relationship satisfaction (Mohr & Kendra, 2011; Otis et al., 2006; Pepping et al., 2018) and negative relationship interactions (Feinstein et al., 2012). However, this process may not be as simple as it was previously thought. For example, Mohr and Daly (2008) suggested that the active use of concealment strategies, rather than the motiva­ tion to conceal, may be associated with strain on lesbian, gay, and bisexual romantic relationships.

Concealment motivation also interacts with other identity processes. Concealment behaviors are positively associated with internalized homo­ negativity and acceptance concerns (Mohr & Kendra, 2011; Pepping et al., 2018), and people with higher levels of identity affirmation generally have lower concealment motivation (Mohr & Kendra, 2011). Previous findings have suggested that concealment motivation is promoted by fear and self-stigmatization and inhibited by holding a positive view of oneself. Although internalized homonegativity and acceptance concerns may

directly impact relationship satisfaction, it is also possible to say that the impact of engaging in concealment behaviors has on relationships is direct. Partners who manage minority stress differ­ ently may have discrepant concealment motivation, which may have negative impacts on relationship satisfaction. For example, a partner high in conceal­ ment motivation may act coldly toward a partner in public settings, which may serve as a source of argument or feelings of isolation that impact relationship satisfaction.

Characteristics of Minority Identity Meyer (2003) explained that holding a minority status leads to personal identification with one’s minority status and also that characteristics of minority identity can augment or weaken the impact of stress. Thus, holding a stigmatized minor­ ity identity may be a source of distress. The same identity may also lead to positive social support that can decrease feelings of stress. In other words, identity can be a source of strength where those with shared identity can derive a sense of commu­ nity while also exposing individuals to stressors as a result of having to navigate prejudices in broader society. The characteristics of minority identity included in this study are identity uncertainty, identity affirmation, and identity centrality.

Identity Uncertainty Identity uncertainty is described as being undecided or questioning one’s lesbian, gay, or bisexual iden­ tity (Mohr & Kendra, 2011). Identity uncertainty has been found to be positively associated with minority stress and negatively associated with wellbeing (Kranz & Pierrard, 2018). Similarly, Mohr and Fassinger (2006) reported identity uncertainty cor­ responds negatively with relationship quality. They theorized that identity uncertainty might be a covert expression of internalized homonegativity and, as a result, have a deleterious impact on relationship quality. Although the research on identity uncer­ tainty is sparse, the extant findings are consistent, suggesting that a possible robust relationship between identity uncertainty and relationship satisfaction may exist.

Identity Affirmation Identity affirmation is the affirmation of one’s lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity (Mohr & Kendra, 2011). Historically, researchers seem to have relied on indirect assessment of identity affirmation or simply hypothesized about how identity affirmation relates to relationship satisfaction. For example,

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Shepler, Glaros, and Boot | Relationship Satisfaction

although they did not directly assess identity affirmation, Mohr and Daly (2008) suggested that a “social climate that is more affirming of same-sex couples and their families will likely reduce the selfstigmatization that has been linked to lower levels of relationship quality in this and other studies” (p. 1005). The researchers seemed to suggest that external validation facilitates internal affirmation of lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity and subsequently contributes to increases in relationship satisfaction.

More recently, a direct positive association between identity affirmation and relationship satisfaction has been reported (Pepping et al., 2018). Identity affirmation also has been associated with less attachment insecurity (Gemberling et al., 2015) and thereby could be a protective factor in roman­ tic relationships (Pepping et al., 2018). Gay and bisexual men who receive support upon disclosing their identity (i.e., those who experience affirma­ tion upon coming out) are more protected against negative outcomes (Ragins et al., 2007; Rosario et al., 2009) and may learn to accept and more easily affirm their own identities (Ryan et al., 2015). This could serve as a protective factor that contributes to relationship satisfaction.

Identity Centrality Identity centrality represents the degree to which individuals view their lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity as being central to their overall identity as a person (Mohr & Kendra, 2011). In two studies, Quinn and Chaudoir (2009) found that individuals with greater identity centrality are particularly vul­ nerable to identity-related stigma; in other words, people whose lesbian, gay, or bisexual identity was more central had greater distress from expe­ riencing stigma. However, among lesbian and gay individuals with strong group identity centrality, col­ lective action served as a coping strategy for stigma despite making perceptions of discrimination more self-evident (McCoy & Major, 2003; Nouvilas-Pallejà et al., 2017). In other research, identity centrality has been identified as a significant buffer against the negative impact of minority stress on mental health (Fingerhut et al., 2010).

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual identity centrality has also been associated with being married Riggle and colleagues (Riggle et al., 2010; 2016) posited that the marriage could reinforce the commitment to the relationship, which then leads to the individual feeling more positive about the relationship and their partner. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual couples experiencing less psychological distress reported greater relationship satisfaction (Kail et al., 2015).

The Current Investigation The present study was undertaken in order to better understand how minority stress impacts relationship satisfaction for gay and bisexual men. We specifi­ cally focused on gay and bisexual men, given that minority stress appears to interact with gender. For example, Mohr and Fassinger (2006) found that stigma sensitivity was significantly associated with relationship quality for gay men, but not for lesbian women. Clarifying the impact of minority stress on relationship satisfaction is essential in understand­ ing the extent to which experiencing minority stress impacts gay and bisexual men and their relation­ ships. Understanding the impact of minority stress processes on relationship satisfaction is important, in part, due to the relationship between mental health and relationship satisfaction. Additionally, minority stress theory appears to have the potential to be applicable in understanding various health and distress processes. Findings from this study are meant to add to the body of work focused on extend­ ing the application of the minority stress theory as an explanatory model for various phenomena.

Informed by Meyer’s (2003) minority stress theory, we predicted that both proximal stressors (i.e., internalized homonegativity, acceptance concerns, and concealment motivation) and characteristics of minority identity (i.e., identity uncertainty, identity affirmation, and identity centrality) would predict relationship satisfaction for gay and bisexual men.

Specifically, we hypothesized that internalized homonegativity, acceptance concerns, conceal­ ment motivation, and identity uncertainty would negatively predict relationship satisfaction whereas identity affirmation and identity centrality would positively predict relationship satisfaction.

Method Participants As part of a larger project, participants were recruited in person at an LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) Pride event (n = 47) and through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk; n = 46). To be included in this study, participants had to identify as gay, bisexual, or pansexual, identify as a man, be 18+ years old, be fluent in English, and be in a romantic relationship. Although bisexuality and pansexuality share some common features, they are not synonymous terms. Nonetheless, pansexual men are likely to experience similar marginalization and minority stressors as bisexual men and thus were invited to take part in this study.

Of the 93 eligible participants who completed the survey, 65 men identified as gay, 23 men

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identified as bisexual, and five identified as pan­ sexual. Participants were 18 to 60 years old, with a mean age of 32.14 years (SD = 10.01). Participants reported being in relationships for 0–6 months (n = 7, 7.5%), 7–12 months (n = 19, 20.4%), 1–2 years (n = 21, 22.6%), 3–5 years (n = 20, 21.5%), 6–10 years (n = 15, 16.1%), and 11+ years (n = 11, 11.8%). Most of the sample identified as White (n = 75, 80.6%); participants also identified as Black/African American (n = 5, 5.4%), Hispanic/ Latino (n = 6, 6.5%), Native American (n = 1, 1.1%), Asian/Asian American/Pacific Islander (n = 4, 4.3%), and Biracial/Multiracial (n = 2, 2.2%).

Education level varied across participants: some high school (n = 1, 1.1%), high school diploma/ GED (n = 9, 9.7%), some college (n = 19, 20.4%), trade school (n = 2, 2.2%), associate’s degree (n = 8, 8.6%), bachelor’s degree (n = 39, 41.9%), and graduate degree + (n = 15, 16.1%). Annual incomes ranged from less than $25,000 (n = 22, 23.7%), $25,000–$34,999 (n = 15, 16.1%), $35,000–$49,999 (n = 22, 23.7%), $50,000–$74,999 (n = 12, 12.9%), $75,000–$99,999 (n = 12, 12.9%), and $100,000– $149,999 (n = 10, 10.8%); no participants indicated their income to be $150,000 or more.

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Procedures After obtaining approval from the Michigan School of Psychology Institutional Review Board, partici­ pants were recruited in person at an LGBTQ Pride event and online through MTurk. This method allowed for access to a broader, and hopefully more representative, sample of participants. To recruit participants through MTurk, a recruitment adver­ tisement was created and posted on the site. The advertisement included information regarding inclusion criteria, the topic of interest, and com­ pensation ($0.50). Those who opted to participate were directed to an online survey where they were provided with informed consent. The survey took approximately 10–12 minutes to complete.

People attending the LGBTQ Pride event were invited in-person to complete a brief survey on sexual identity by graduate student research assis­ tants. Potential participants were informed that, for each completed survey a $0.50 donation would be made to a local homeless shelter that serves LGBTQ youth. Those who opted to take part in the study were offered a seat, provided with informed consent information, and given a paper-pencil version of the survey to complete. To reduce risk, participants’ identifying information (e.g., names, addresses) was not collected. To control for maturation and

history effects, online and in-person recruitment took place concurrently.

Measures Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Identity Scale (LGBIS) The LGBIS (Mohr & Kendra, 2011) is a 27-item scale designed to assess eight distinct dimensions of lesbian, gay, and bisexual identity: concealment motivation, identity uncertainty, internalized homo­ negativity, difficult process, acceptance concerns, identity superiority, identity centrality, and identity affirmation. These subscales have been shown to exhibit strong internal consistency, α = .75 to .89 (Mohr & Kendra, 2011). For the purposes of this study, we opted to measure the three proximal minority stress processes: expectations of rejection, concealment, and internalized homophobia using three subscales of the LGBIS, acceptance con­ cerns, concealment motivation, and internalized homonegativity, respectively. To measure the three characteristics of minority identity: prominence, valence, and integration, we used the LGBIS iden­ tity uncertainty, identity affirmation, and identity centrality scales. In the present study, internal consistency for the six subscales ranged from α = .73 to .91. Additional descriptive information about the scales can be found in Table 1.

Relationship Assessment Scale (RAS) The 7-item RAS (Hendrick et al., 1998; Hendrick, 1988) is a univariate scale used to assess overall relationship satisfaction. Unlike measures that are only suitable for couples who are married, the RAS may be used to assess relationship satisfaction for those in various types of romantic relationships (e.g., dating, engaged) and of differing sexual iden­ tities. The RAS has demonstrated stable internal consistency in Sanchez et al.’s (2009) investigation of relationship satisfaction among gay men (α = .88) and in Kintanar’s (2013) comparison of relationship satisfaction among nonmarried men and women of differing sexual identities (α = .78). Consistent with a meta-analysis by Graham et al. (2011) who reported an overall RAS internal consistency of α = .87, in the current study, the RAS’s internal consistency was α = .87. Additional descriptive information about the scale can be found in Table 1.

Demographic Information Demographic information was collected through several items at the end of the survey. These items were specifically placed at the end of the survey to avoid priming effects that may be associated

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with questions related to identity and relationship status. Examples of items included in this section asked participants to report information such as their gender, sexual orientation, race, income, and education.

Data Management In instances in which data were missing, we opted to use within-subject mean substitution. Specifically, the mean of the items completed for the subscale was calculated for each individual participant who did not respond to an item. We chose this method rather than substituting the sample mean in order to more accurately represent the general trend of responses for each participant (rather than the trend for the overall sample).

Plan of Analysis Multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to determine how well concealment motivation, identity uncertainty, internalized homonegativity, identity centrality, acceptance concerns, and iden­ tity affirmation predicted relationship satisfaction for gay and bisexual men. Multiple linear regres­ sion was selected as the analytic method because it allows for identification of the contribution of each predictor on the criterion variable, above and beyond the shared variance among the predictors.

Although the minority stress model suggests that the characteristics of minority identity moderate the relationship between minority stress and various mental health outcomes, little research exists on the predictive relationship between each of the identity characteristics and relationship satisfaction. Prior to considering a moderation model, research must confirm that direct effects exist between predictors and potential moderators. Furthermore, given the sample size in this study, further exploration of moderating effects was deemed inappropriate.

Analysis in this study was thus limited to this phase of testing the minority stress model as an explana­ tory model for relationship satisfaction.

To assess for multicollinearity, autocorrelation, independence of errors, and univariate normality, a series of analyses were completed. Despite some strong correlations existing among the individual variables (see Table 1), all variance inflation factor scores were within the acceptable range for the predictor variables (see Table 2), indicating that multicollinearity was unlikely to bias the results (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2000). The Durbin–Watson statistic was also within the acceptable range, as identified by Field (2005), suggesting that autocor­ relation was not a concern, and the assumption of independent errors was met. Although there are no universally agreed upon cut-off values for determin­ ing symmetry and kurtosis, George and Mallerhy (2010) posited that values for asymmetry and kurtosis between −2 and +2 are acceptable in order to demonstrate normal univariate distribution.

Each of our predictors had kurtosis and skewness scores that were within this range, suggesting that univariate normality was achieved.

Results Preliminary Analysis Preliminary analysis (see Table 1) revealed that four of the six predictor variables (i.e., conceal­ ment motivation, identity uncertainty, internalized homonegativity, and identity affirmation) were significantly correlated with the criterion variable, relationship satisfaction (r = −.35, r = −.45, r = −.37, r = .39, p ≤ .001, respectively). Two of the predictor variables were not significantly correlated with relationship satisfaction (i.e., identity centrality and acceptance concerns). Participants recruited from LGBTQ Pride event reported significantly higher relationship satisfaction compared to participants

TABLE 1 Pearson’s Bivariate Correlation for Relationship Satisfaction With Predictor Variables Predictors

M (SD) Total

M (SD) Pride

1. Relationship Satisfaction

M (SD) MTurk

1

2

3

4

5

6

32.79 (7.23)

32.26 (6.79)

30.26 (6.86)

2. Identity Concealment

3.36 (1.35)

2.88+ (1.32)

3.86+ (1.20)

−.35**

–

3. Identity Uncertainty

1.88 (1.22)

1.34 (0.62)

2.45 (1.42)

−.45

.22**

–

4. Internalized Homonegativity

2.01 (1.28)

1.46 (0.74)

2.57 (1.47)

−.37

.24*

.80**

–

5. Identity Centrality

3.23 (1.22)

3.25 (1.32)

3.20 (1.11)

−.12

.21

**

.28

.35**

–

6. Identity Acceptance

3.13 (1.29)

3.00 (1.24)

3.27 (1.35)

−.11

.19*

.33**

−.37**

.08

–

FALL 2021

7. Identity Affirmation

4.83 (1.31)

5.46 (0.84)

4.18 (1.37)

.39

−.35

−.41

.60

.08

PSI CHI JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

+

+ +

+

+

+ +

+

– ** **

**

*

**

−.25

**

**

**

Note: +Difference between group means significant at p < .01. *p < .05. ** p < .01

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301

Relationship Satisfaction | Shepler, Glaros, and Boot

recruited from MTurk, F(1, 92) = 12.45, p ≤ .001, η2 = .12. Participants recruited from MTurk reported higher levels of identity concealment, F(1, 92) = 14.03, p ≤ .001, η2 = .13, than those recruited at LGBTQ Pride event. Those recruited from the LGBTQ Pride event reported lower identity uncertainty, F(1, 92) = 24.19, p ≤ .001, η2 = .21, and lower internalized homonegativity, F(1, 92) = 21.36, p ≤ .001, η2 = .19, when compared to MTurk participants. Although these differences might be understood to mean that participants differed due to the recruitment venue, we maintain that these differences are reflective of the identity processes themselves. In other words, it is logical to assume that those who are more certain of and less concerned about concealing their identities would be more likely to be found at an LGBTQ Pride event than in an online venue. Subsequently, we opted not to control for recruitment venue in data analysis.

Linear Regression Analysis The multiple linear regression model was sig­ nificant, F(6, 86) = 9.42, p ≤ .001, R 2 = .40, and the TABLE 2 Regression-Analysis Summary for Variables Predicting Relationship Satisfaction Variables

B

β

t

Constant

34.24 3.93

–

8.70

–

–

–

Identity concealment

−1.09 0.50 −0.20 −2.23

.029

.034

1.19

Identity uncertainty

−2.61 0.84 −0.44 −3.10

Internalized homonegativity Identity centrality

p

sr 2

.003

.067

2.87

0.93

.356

.006

3.28

−2.03 0.66 −0.33 −3.06

0.80 0.86 0.14

.003

.065

1.63

Acceptance concerns

0.38 0.52 0.07

0.74

.463

.004

1.21

Identity affirmation

2.60 0.65 0.47

3.99

.000

.112

1.96

Note. sr 2 = semi-partial squared correlation; VIF = variance inflation factor.

FIGURE 1 Mediation Model Identity Uncertainty

β = .80**

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302

VIF

SE B

Internalized Homonegativity

Note. **p ≤ .01.

β = −.45**

β = −.01

Relationship Satisfaction

overall model accounted for approximately 40% of the total variance in relationship satisfaction (R 2 = .40, adjusted R 2 = .36). Further review of Table 2 indicated that concealment motivation (β = −.20, p = .029), identity uncertainty (β = −.44, p = .003, and identity centrality (β = −.33, p = .003) were inversely and significantly predictive of relationship satisfaction, whereas identity affirmation (β = .47, p ≤ .001) was positively and significantly predictive of relationship satisfaction. Squared semipartial correlation coefficients indicated that identity affirmation contributed to 11.2% of the variance in relationship satisfaction, followed by identity centrality (6.7%), identity uncertainty (6.6%), and concealment motivation (3.6%).

Exploratory Post Hoc Analysis: A Deeper Dive Into the Role of Internalized Homonegativity Historically, internalized homonegativity has been a significant predictor of relationship satisfaction among lesbian, gay, and bisexual couples (Frost & Meyer, 2009; Mohr & Fassinger, 2006; Otis et al., 2006; Symanksi et al., 2008). One relevant outlier among this trend is offered by Kamen et al. (2011) who, in studying gay and bisexual men, reported that internalized homonegativity was not a signifi­ cant predictor of relationship satisfaction. In the current study, when regressed onto relationship satisfaction, the relationship between internalized homonegativity, and relationship satisfaction was significant, F(1, 91) = 14.00, p ≤ .001, R 2 = .133. However, as described in the main analysis, when incorporated into a more complex account of minority stress, internalized homonegativity dropped from significance, suggesting that mod­ eration or mediation may be occurring. Despite being one of the most well-studied variables, the relationship between internalized homonegativ­ ity and relationship satisfaction appears to have unrecognized nuances. To better understand the relationship between internalized homonegativ­ ity and relationship satisfaction, we conducted exploratory analyses.

As noted, internalized homonegativity was correlated with but did not significantly predict relationship satisfaction when included in the full model. Mohr and Fassinger (2006) suggested that this could be due to the possibility that identity uncertainty is a covert expression of internalized homonegativity (mediation) and therefore has a negative impact on relationship satisfaction.

Informed by this suggestion, we conducted a post hoc mediation analysis (see Figure 1) to explore

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Shepler, Glaros, and Boot | Relationship Satisfaction

the impact of identity uncertainty on the relation­ ship between internalized homonegativity and relationship satisfaction. Consistent with Mohr and Fassinger’s proposal, the analysis confirmed that identity uncertainty (β = −.45, p = .005) fully mediated the relationship between internalized homonegativity (β = −.01, p = .961) and relationship satisfaction.

Discussion For gay and bisexual men, relationship status and relationship satisfaction have been linked to lon­ gevity, positive mental health, and life satisfaction (Kurdek, 2004; Mohr & Fassinger, 2006). Others have extended the scope of minority stress theory to understanding relationship satisfaction (e.g., Feinstein et al., 2018; Knoble & Linville, 2010).

Our findings add to the discussion on how identity and relationship satisfaction are intertwined. Most importantly, results of the current study help clarify relationships among minority stress processes and relationship satisfaction.

Identity centrality and identity affirmation were predictive of relationship satisfaction. In other words, although gay and bisexual men’s relation­ ship satisfaction was less impacted by internalized homonegativity and worry about acceptance concerns, it was positively impacted by holding sexual identity as a central and positive aspect of who they are. Based on these results, efforts aimed at promoting self-acceptance and viewing sexual identity as a central aspect of oneself may facilitate higher relationship satisfaction among gay and bisexual men. This aligns with findings from Riggle and Rostosky (2012), who discussed the importance of positive identity development and the strengths associated with embracing a gay or bisexual (or lesbian) identity. Indeed, social support from friends and family can mitigate the effects of minority stress (Fingerhut, 2018), possibly leading to less pressure to conceal gay and bisexual identity.

Furthermore, having ties to a community that celebrates and affirms identity as a central feature of a person’s life may facilitate the celebration of same-sex relationships rather than stigmatizing this aspect of gay and bisexual men’s lives. In develop­ ing a strong and positive lesbian, gay, and bisexual identity, people have reported strong relationship equality and enhanced emotional connections with others (Riggle & Rostosky, 2012), both of which may facilitate relationship satisfaction.

Gendered differences in the extant research suggested that gender cannot be ignored in efforts

to identify ways to promote relationship satisfaction among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adults. Notably, our findings differ from research that has focused on same-sex attracted women. Some studies (Feinstein et al., 2018; Theis et al., 2016) have found that internalized homonegativity is higher in gay men compared to lesbian women. This suggests there may be a gender difference in the association between internalized homonegativity and relationship quality. However, Kamen et al.

(2011) reported that internalized homonegativity was not a significant predictor of relationship satis­ faction for gay men, which is similar to the findings in the current study. It has been suggested that these higher levels of internalized homonegativity could be due, in part, to gay men experiencing more sexual stigma compared to lesbian women (Morrison & Morrison, 2011). It is also important to note that Feinstein et al. (2018) and Theis et al.

(2016) assessed internalized homonegativity alone.

In the current study, we assessed internalized homo­ negativity as part of the minority stress model. This suggests that, when assessing the complete sexual minority identity model, internalized homonegativ­ ity may not be as significant as previously believed.

Lastly, when only looking at relationship quality overall, Kurdek (2004) found that on average lesbian women reported higher relationship quality across the course of the relationship, regardless of length of time, when compared to gay men. Lesbian women also held more positive beliefs about their relationship. Our findings add to the discussion of how relationship satisfaction may be differentially constructed for men and women.

Like Mohr and Fassinger (2006), we found that internalized homonegativity and identity uncer­ tainty were inversely associated with relationship satisfaction. However, internalized homonegativity was not a significant predictor for relationship satisfaction, which is consistent with Kamen et al.

(2011). Post hoc analysis indicated that identity uncertainty fully mediated the relationship between internalized homonegativity and relation­ ship satisfaction. This finding lends support to Mohr and Fassinger’s (2006) position that identity uncertainty is a covert expression of internalized homonegativity. Much of the current research has focused on internalized homonegativity and its effects on gay and bisexual men while giving less attention to other identity processes such as identity uncertainty. Results of this study suggest that additional inquiry into the role of identity uncertainty is warranted because increased identity

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certainty may buffer the impact of internalized homonegativity on important variables, such as being in a romantic relationship. It is unknown whether this same effect would be observed in the relationship between internalized homonegativity and mental health, the originally intended focus of the minority stress model (Meyer, 2003).

Although Mohr and Fassinger (2006) also identified acceptance concerns (and identity superi­ ority) as having significant inverse relationships with relationship quality, we found that the acceptance concerns variable was not a significant predictor of relationship satisfaction. Multiple possible explana­ tions for this difference exist. First, relationship satisfaction may be a somewhat different construct than relationship quality. Mohr and Fassinger used the Supportive Communication subscale of the Marital Communication Inventory (Bienvenu, 1970) whereas we used the Relationship Assessment Scale (Hendrick et al., 1998). Although the Marital Communication Inventory is used to assess the qual­ ity of the relationship, the Relationship Assessment Scale is used to examine overall satisfaction with a romantic relationship. It is possible that minority stress processes differentially impact communica­ tion between partners and happiness with the overall relationship. Second, there appears to be a notable difference in relationship longevity and racial diversity between this study and Mohr and Fassinger’s study. Almost half of our participants had been in their relationship for less than two years; the mean relationship length for participants in Mohr and Fassinger’s (2006) study was 6.31 (SD = 5.65) years. Perhaps cohort effects or relationship longevity are associated with different predictors of relationship satisfaction, though it is worth noting that age did not moderate the associations in this study. Finally, Mohr and Fassinger (2006) reported that “the distributions of scores for a number of the variables were notably skewed” (p. 1091) in their analysis; similar concerns were not observed in our data.

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Limitations Relationship structure was not considered in this study. Conley et al. (2013) and Levine et al. (2018) both reported that monogamy appears to be positively associated with relationship satisfaction for gay and bisexual men. Future research should consider the role of relationship structure (e.g., consensual monogamy, consensual nonmonogamy) as a contributor to relationship satisfaction.

Another limitation in this study was that we

did not control for the gender of the participant’s partner (which, might have impacted how bisexual men in particular responded to the survey). Some of the differences in our findings compared to past research may be related to the nature of respondents’ relationships (i.e., same or different sex partners). For example, internalized homo­ negativity and acceptance concerns may be less prominent among bisexual/pansexual men who are engaged in relationships with women than gay and bisexual men who are in relationships with men. Those in same-sex relationships may have a greater awareness of their sexual orientation or feel as if they are “on display” when holding hands with a significant other in public. They may also have more salient internalized stigma than bisexual/pansexual men who are in relationships with women. Such concerns would be important to examine in future research.

Conclusion Meyer’s (2003) minority stress model has been shown to have applications to mental health (Sanders & McCartney Chalk, 2016). The goal of the present study was to join others in determining the potential applicability of the minority stress model in understanding relationship satisfac­ tion. Results were promising. Specifically, the model accounted for a respectable portion of the variance (about 40%) in relationship satisfaction. Given that three of the four significant predictors of relation­ ship satisfaction (i.e., identity affirmation, identity centrality, identity uncertainty) were characteristics of minority identity, this facet of the minority stress model may have particular importance in under­ standing relationship satisfaction. Additionally, the results identify identity centrality and identity affirmation as potential pathways for facilitating relationship satisfaction among gay and bisexual men. Such findings may have particular relevance for those who provide clinical services to gay and bisexual men or to those conducting research on gay and bisexual men’s romantic relationships.

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Rosario, M., Schrimshaw, E. W., & Hunter, J. (2009). Disclosure of sexual orientation and subsequent substance use and abuse among lesbian, gay, and bisexual youths: Critical role of disclosure reactions. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 23(1), 175−184. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014284 Rostosky, S. S., Riggle, E. D. B., Gray, B. E., & Hatton, R. L. (2007). Minority stress experiences in committed same-sex couple relationships. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 38(4), 392–400. https://doi.org/10.1037/0735-7028.38.4.392 Rowen, C. J., & Malcolm, J. P. (2003). Correlates of internalized homophobia and homosexual identity formation in a sample of gay men. Journal of Homosexuality, 43(2), 77–92. http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J082v43n02_05 Ryan, W. S., Legate, N., & Weinstein, N. (2015). Coming out as lesbian, gay, or bisexual: The lasting impact of initial disclosure experiences. Self and Identity, 14(5), 549−569. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2015.1029516 Sanchez, F. J., Bockl, S., & Villain, E. (2009). Gender role conflict, interest in casual sex, and relationship satisfaction among gay men. Journal of Men and Masculinity, 10(3), 237−243. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0016325 Sanders, E. K., & McCartney Chalk. (2016). Predictors of psychological outcomes in nonheterosexual individuals. Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 21(2), 100−110. https://doi.org/10.24839/2164-8204.JN21.2.100 Szymanski, D. M., Chung, Y. B., & Balsam, K. F. (2001). Psychosocial correlates of internalized homophobia in lesbians. Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and Development, 34(1), 27−38. https://doi.org/10.1080/07481756.2001.12069020 Szymanski, D. M., & Hilton, A. N. (2013). Fear of intimacy as a mediator of the

internalized heterosexism-relationship quality link among men in samesex relationships. Contemporary Family Therapy, 35(4), 760−772. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-013-9249-3 Szymanski, D. M., Kashubeck-West, S., & Meyer, J. (2008). Internalized heterosexism: A historical and theoretical overview. The Counseling Psychologist, 36(4), 510–524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000007309488 Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2000). Using multivariate statistics (4th ed.).

Allyn and Bacon.

Thies, K. E., Starks, T. J., Denmark, F. L., & Rosenthal, L. (2016). Internalized homonegativity and relationship quality in same-sex romantic couples: A test of mental health mechanisms and gender as a moderator. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 3(3), 325–335. https://doi. org/10.1037/sgd0000183 Todosijevic, J., Rothblum, E. D., & Solomon, S. E. (2005). Relationship satisfaction, affectivity, and gay-specific stressors in same-sex couples joined in civil unions. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 29(2), 158−166. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2005.00178.x Author Note. Dustin K. Shepler https://orcid.org/00000002-0137-9812 Jared W. Boot https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0644-5882 Correspondence may be addressed to Dustin K. Shepler, Core Doctoral Faculty, Michigan School of Professional Psychology, 26811 Orchard Lake Rd., Farmington Hills, MI 48334. Email: dshepler@msp.edu

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https://doi.org/10.24839/2325-7342.JN26.3.307

Emerging Adults’ Timing and Self-Efficacy for Transitional and Gradual Roles Darcey N. Powell* and Stephanie Gaines Department of Psychology, Roanoke College

ABSTRACT. Emerging adulthood is a time of great transition, including but not limited to the commencement of “adult roles” and responsibilities. The present study examined emerging adults’ (EAs’) perceptions of transitional (i.e., cohabitating, marriage, parenting) and gradual (i.e., religious beliefs, political beliefs, managing own health) roles. Participants were recruited from a small liberal arts college (N = 88) and from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform (N = 181). They were surveyed on the age at which they anticipated or reported achieving the examined roles and their current self-efficacy for the roles. Female EAs reported intending to or achieving the transitional roles at a significantly later age than female EAs of the late 20th century (ps ≤ .001, ds 0.77–0.95). Additionally, female EAs anticipated role achievement for cohabitating, marriage, parenting, and religious beliefs at later ages than male EAs (ps < .05, gs 0.33–1.33). Moreover, male and female EAs differed in a few role-specific self-efficacies if they had not yet achieved the desired adult role (e.g., marriage, parenting; ps < .05, gs 0.62–0.98), but did not differ if they had already achieved the role. Lastly, the difference between EAs’ age and their role achievement largely did not predict their role-specific self-efficacies. The results provide additional insight into EAs’ expectations and current perceptions of themselves and may be useful to individuals who work regularly with EAs who are apprehensive about the extent to which they are “on time” and “ready” to engage in the examined transitional and gradual roles.

Keywords: emerging adulthood, emerging adults, adult roles, social roles, self-efficacy, expectations

E

merging adulthood—the time during which individuals are between the ages of 18 and 29—is a life stage of great transition, including but not limited to the commencement of “adult roles” and responsibilities (Arnett, 2000, 2006, 2014). Although it has become a well-documented life stage, continued societal, economic, and technological changes have led to uncertainty as to when emerging adults (EAs) intend to achieve the roles representative of “adulthood” and how confident they feel in their ability to carry out those roles. Emerging adulthood is a time where what is required of individuals, in terms of work and family responsibilities, is often flexible as they become more independent from *Faculty mentor

their family of origin (Arnett, 2006). Becoming independent—such as attending college and living on-campus or away from home—is often a first step in practicing adult roles.

Social Role Theory At any one point in time, individuals may inhabit a singular role or multiple roles. Roles include, but are not limited to, age roles, family roles, educa­ tional roles, and occupational roles. As individuals progress through their life span, the roles that they occupy and engage in often shift. This shifting may occur because the type of role itself changes or because the expected behaviors within the role are altered (Allen & van de Vliert, 1984). Further,

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roles themselves are multifaceted in nature, relying on facets of society, culture, and the individual for their characterization. Normative expectations for roles are expressed through the communication that a culture provides about the role, the extrinsic motivations offered for role engagement, as well as the environmental and contextual factors that facilitate role engagement (Allen & van de Vliert, 1984). Additionally, individuals’ self-concept and sense of self, as well as their personal capacities for engaging in the role such as knowledge of the role and perceived self-efficacy, also contribute to role expectations and engagement (Allen & van de Vliert, 1984).

The roles that EAs are expecting or beginning to take on can be classified into two categories: transitional and gradual. Transitional roles are those that occur at a moment in time that add a role to an individual’s identity (Arnett, 2006). For example, moving out of the family home, getting married, or having a child are all transitional roles.

However, EAs tend to experience a great deal of instability on their path to transitional role achieve­ ments (Cohen et al., 2003), so it is possible that an EA may move back into the family home or that their marriage will dissolve. Gradual roles, on the other hand, are those that develop over a period of time (Arnett, 2006). Gradual roles have a point of initiation and a point of achievement, although the former may not be as clearly discernable as the point of achievement. For example, becoming financially independent, feeling responsible for one’s own decisions, identifying one’s religious or political beliefs, or managing one’s own health could all be considered gradual roles. According to Arnett (1998, 2006), quite infrequently do people feel that a specific time (e.g., turning 18) or event (e.g., getting married) caused them to become an adult. Instead, EAs are more likely to indicate that achieving gradual roles increase their likelihood of feeling like they are an adult (Arnett, 1998; Nelson & Barry, 2005).

However, although extant research has dem­ onstrated that EAs are assuming transitional adult roles later than EAs of prior generations (Bloome & Ang, 2020; Matthews & Hamilton, 2016; Smock & Schwartz, 2020), little is known about intended timing of gradual roles or the association between EAs’ perceived competency for adult roles and their intended timing for each role. Such information may be useful to student affairs and counseling staff as they work with students to normalize the process of achieving transitional and gradual roles during

and after college, given that college is a place for EAs to practice and obtain mastery experiences for both transitional and gradual roles.

Transitional Roles Although EAs tend to perceive that they will “be an adult” once they have achieved specific gradual roles (Arnett, 1998; Nelson & Barry, 2005), it is transitional roles that are often initially thought of when one imagines someone who is “an adult.” Examples of transitional roles include, but are not limited to, cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood. The pres­ ence of transitional roles in individuals’ schema of “adulting” should not be surprising given that those roles make up a large part of individuals’ social lives during adulthood. However, the timing of these transitional roles has shifted dramatically compared to prior cohorts (Bloome & Ang, 2020; Matthews & Hamilton, 2016; Smock & Schwartz, 2020).

Cohabitation. Cohabitation is substantially more common today than it was even in the 1980s (Lamidi et al., 2019; Sassler & Lichter, 2020; Smock & Schwartz, 2020). Although young adults (ages 30–34) are most likely to have cohabitated, twothirds of both “older” EAs (25–29) and “older” young adults (35–39) report currently or previously cohabitating with a romantic partner (Manning, 2013). With an average duration of approximately 18 months (Lamidi et al., 2019) and more cohabi­ tations leading to relationship dissolution than to marriage (Manning et al., 2014; Smock & Swartz, 2020), it is not uncommon for someone to cohabi­ tate with more than one romantic partner during emerging adulthood. Further, more EAs report currently cohabitating than report currently being married (Gurrentz, 2018).

Marriage. A slight majority of the U.S. popula­ tion still marries, though, with a total of 57% ever being married in 2020 (Carlson, 2020), and most adolescents intend to marry eventually (Anderson, 2016). However, at the societal level, a trend has been noted where marriages are beginning at later and later ages (Bloome & Ang, 2020; Sassler & Lichter, 2020; Smock & Schwartz, 2020). The median age of marriage in 1970 was 20.8 for women and 23.2 for men, whereas in 2017 it was 27.4 for women and 29.5 for men (U.S. Census Bureau, 2017).

Parenting. Following the pattern of delaying marriage, the age at which EAs become parents (i.e., have their first child) has also been pushed back when compared to prior generations (Matthews & Hamilton, 2002, 2016; Smock & Schwartz, 2020; Stykes, 2011). Fewer adolescents (15–19)

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Powell and Gaines | Emerging Adults' Role Timing and Self-Efficacy

are becoming parents and greater proportions of EAs are waiting until the latter years of emerging adulthood (25–29) or to young adulthood to become parents (Martin et al., 2018; Matthews & Hamilton, 2016).

Gradual Roles Compared to transitional roles, there is substan­ tially less data on the timing of gradual roles.

Examples of gradual roles include, but are not limited to, becoming financially independent, feel­ ing responsible for one’s own decisions, identifying one’s religious or political beliefs, and managing one’s own health by setting and achieving healthrelated goals. The stage of emerging adulthood was posited by Arnett (2000, 2006, 2014) to respond to a recognition that individuals were achieving both gradual and transitional roles later than prior gen­ erations had. For example, although almost 33% of EAs were financially independent by age 22 in 1980, less than 25% were financially independent in 2018, despite more than 60% of adults believing children should be financially independent by that age (Barroso et al., 2019). Most of the extant research related to gradual roles has focused on changes within those roles (see Chan et al., 2015; Hatemi et al., 2009; Stoppa & Lefkowitz, 2010), factors that predict achieving specific gradual roles (see Xiao et al., 2014; Wilson et al., 2011), and the association between those roles and well-being or adjustment to adulthood (see Lanctot & Poulin, 2018; Nelson & Barry, 2005; Sharon, 2016). Less attention has been given to the age at which EAs anticipate achieving gradual roles. This gap in the literature hinders practitioners’ ability to provide timely information and interventions to EAs regarding their transition to adulthood.

Self-Efficacy As stated above, perceived self-efficacy also contrib­ utes to role expectations and engagement (Allen & van de Vliert, 1984). Bandura described self-efficacy as “beliefs in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the courses of action required to manage prospective situations” (Bandura, 1997, p. 2).

Efficacy can be measured in several ways: consider­ ing an individual’s overall perceived competence (i.e., general self-efficacy), considering an indi­ vidual’s perceived competency for a specific area of their life (i.e., domain-specific self-efficacy), or considering an individual’s perceived competency for particular tasks (i.e., task-specific self-efficacy).

Bandura (2006) argued that self-efficacy varies as a function of the domain examined, making

general self-efficacy measures less informative in comparison to domain- or task-specific measures of self-efficacy. Moreover, competency can be assessed not only when an individual has achieved a specific role (e.g., as a partner in a marriage or has defined their religious beliefs), but also before the individual has achieved the role.

Present Study The first aim of this study was to support findings from recent investigations that EAs anticipate achieving transitional roles at a later age than earlier cohorts, as well as extend the descriptive analysis of timing to gradual roles. The transitional roles examined in this study were age at first cohabitation, first marriage, and first parenthood.

The gradual roles examined were identifying religious beliefs, political beliefs, and managing one’s health. The second aim of this study was to explore the association between EAs’ age of role achievement and their current self-efficacy for the roles. For each transitional and gradual role assessed in this study, a domain-specific measure of self-efficacy was used. The self-efficacy analyses accounted for whether or not they had achieved the examined transitional or gradual role.

It was hypothesized that the anticipated age of transitional role achievement would be later than the age reported for the roles in the late 20th century. Given the dearth of prior research on gradual roles, an a priori hypothesis for age of gradual role achievement was not posited. It was also hypothesized that participants closer to the age at which they anticipated role achievement would feel more efficacious in that role given its temporal proximity. Furthermore, and in line with prior scholars’ findings (Kreider & Ellis, 2011; Manning et al., 2014; Stykes, 2011), gender differences in anticipated age of role achievement and current self-efficacy for the examined roles were explored.

Method Participants In total, 269 emerging adults completed the study (see Table 1). A similar number of college students participated (n = 88) as those from both sets of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) workers (i.e., master and general) who resided in the United States (N = 89, master workers and N = 92, general workers).

Materials These data are from a larger study on EAs’ selfefficacy. The following descriptions refer to measures used in the current analyses.

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Demographic Questionnaire Participants answered a series of questions about their general background. In doing so, participants provided their age, ethnicity, educational status, and relationship history.

Age of Role Achievement Created for this study, participants completed a measure that assessed their expectations for role achievement. For each role examined (i.e., cohabitating, marriage, parenting, identifying religious beliefs, political beliefs, and managing one’s health), participants typed the age at which they believed that they would achieve or had achieved the role. As such, there was a single item indicator for each age of role achievement. Each listed age was also compared to the age provided in the demographics to code whether the participant had achieved that specific role or not.

Self-Efficacy Each measure of self-efficacy was measured on a Likert-type scale from 1 (not at all competent) to 4 (very competent). On all measures, participant responses were averaged to calculate role-specific self-efficacies. Higher scores indicated more self-effi­ cacy for the examined role. The Cronbach’s alpha (α) provided indicates the internal consistency for each measure from the present study’s data.

Marriage Self-Efficacy. Participants’ marriage self-efficacy was measured using a slightly modi­ fied version of the Mutuality subscale1 from the Relationship Self-Efficacy Scale (Lopez et al., 2007) plus two additional questions that were asked (α = .86): (a) I am able to tell my partner when I feel TABLE 1 Participant Demographics Demographics Age

Students (n = 88)

Mastery MTurk General MTurk (n = 89) (n = 92)

25.87(3.48)

19.34(1.34)

25.64(2.71)

Women

42.0%

22.5%

39.1%

Men

58.0%

77.5%

60.9%

14.8%

5.6%

12.0%

Gender

Race/Ethnicity African American Asian American

6.8%

0.0%

7.6%

69.3%

89.9%

68.5%

Latinx

4.5%

3.4%

6.5%

Multiracial/Other

3.4%

1.1%

5.4%

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Note. Mean (SD) is provided for age. All other demographic variables are presented as percentages.

hurt or upset with them, and (b) I am able to avoid temptations to “cheat” on my partner.

Health Self-Efficacy. Participants’ health selfefficacy was measured by the Health Self-Efficacy Scale (Lee et al., 2008). Participants were asked how competent they felt about their ability to improve their own health with five questions (α = .82).

Parenting Self-Efficacy. Participants’ parenting self-efficacy was measured using the Parenting SelfEfficacy Scale (Teti & Gelfand, 1991). Participants were asked how competent they felt in being able to complete nine tasks, and were also asked a single question about their overall perceived self-efficacy for parenting an infant (α = .95).

Political Self-Efficacy. Participants’ political self-efficacy was measured using a modified and expanded version of the Perceived Political SelfEfficacy Scale (Caprara et al., 2009). Participants were asked how competent they felt in completing the following 5 politically oriented tasks (α = .90): (a) state your own political opinion openly, even in clearly hostile settings; (b) promote public initiatives to support political programs that you believe are just; (c) actively promote the election of political candidates in which you trust; (d) promote effective activities of information and mobilization in your own community (of work, friends, and family) to sustain political programs in which you believe; and (e) use the means you have as a citizen to critically monitor the actions of your political representatives.

Cohabitation Self-Efficacy. Participants’ cohabi­ tating self-efficacy was measured using a 12-item Cohabitating Self-Efficacy Scale that was created for this study (α = .90). Participants were asked how competent they felt in being able to complete the following tasks: (a) dividing the responsibility of doing laundry, (b) dividing the responsibility of cleaning, (c) dividing the responsibility of cooking meals, (d) dividing the home- related finances, (e) deciding with your partner how to spend discretionary funds (e.g., going out to eat, buying a new TV, taking a vacation together), (f) accepting your partner’s lifestyle differences (e.g., tidiness, sleep schedule), (g) telling your partner you would prefer to spend time with other friends/ family, (h) accepting when your partner wants to spend time with other family/friends, (i) telling your partner when you would prefer to be alone, (j) accepting when your partner wants to spend All 16 questions were intended to be used in a slightly reworded manner but three (i.e., Questions 13, 35, and 14; Lopez et al., 2007) were accidentally left out of the survey. As such, rather than 18 total questions for marriage self-efficacy, participants answered 15.

1

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Powell and Gaines | Emerging Adults' Role Timing and Self-Efficacy

time alone, (k) accepting your partner’s desire to do things (around the home) his or her way, and (l) in general, how good are you at living with a significant other.

Religious Self-Efficacy. Participants’ current religious self-efficacy was measured using a 4-item Religious Self-Efficacy Scale that was created for this study (α = .86). Participants were asked how competent they felt engaging in the following tasks: (a) I am confident in my ability to clearly explain my religious beliefs to others, (b) I am confident in my ability to find a place of worship that aligns with my beliefs, (c) I am confident in my ability to regularly attend a worship service of my choice, and (d) I am confident in my ability to actively participate in a service of my choice.

Procedure Prior to conducting the study, the institutional review board at Roanoke College approved the study (protocol #16PS026). Participants were recruited from a small liberal arts college in the southeast and from MTurk. The students were recruited from a departmental subject pool using SONA. Through MTurk, a general sample of partici­ pants was recruited, as well as a sample of “master workers.” The latter group is a subset of individuals who have demonstrated a consistent level of highquality output for particular tasks (Miller et al., 2017) but also tend to be more homogenous than general MTurk workers (Springer et al., 2016).

The survey was hosted on KeySurvey (https:// www.keysurvey.com). Both groups electronically consented to the study, and then completed the measures from a computer. Students completed the study in a campus computer lab and earned course credit or were entered into a gift card drawing for their participation; MTurk workers completed it from the computer they used to complete MTurk tasks and were compensated through the system.

Results Analyses were conducted to examine whether par­ ticipants differed based on the sample source (i.e., students versus MTurk master workers versus MTurk general workers; see Table 1). Mastery MTurk workers were younger, less likely to be female, and more racially homogenous than General MTurk workers, t(179) = 19.75, p < .001, Χ2(1) = 5.88, p = .015, and Χ 2(5) = 15.03, p = .010, respectively.

Comparing students to MTurk workers, students were significantly older, t(267) = 6.72, p < .001.

However, students and MTurk workers did not differ

when it came to gender or ethnicity, Χ2(1) = 3.23, p = .072 and Χ2(5) = 4.09, p = .537, respectively.

Additionally, one-way analyses of variance with Bonferroni post-hoc analyses were conducted to examine whether participants responded differently to the core variables of interest (i.e., age of role achievements and role-specific selfefficacies) based on the sample source. There were no between-group differences regarding their anticipated/reported age of role achievement.

Additionally, the samples responded similarly regarding their role-specific self-efficacies, except for cohabitating, F(2, 263) = 7.76, p = .001, ηp2 = .06, and political self-efficacies, F(2, 264) = 4.09, p = .018, ηp2 = .03. For cohabitating self-efficacy, students and MTurk general workers perceived their self-efficacy to be significantly higher than MTurk master workers (Mdiff = 0.62, p = .001 and Mdiff = 0.45, p = .017, respectively). For political self-efficacy, MTurk general workers perceived their self-efficacy to be significantly higher than MTurk master workers (Mdiff = 0.24, p = .029). Overall, the samples were relatively similar and, as such, collapsed together for the analyses.

Role Achievement To analyze the first hypothesis that the age of transi­ tional role achievement would be later than the age reported for the roles in the late 20th century, one sample t tests were conducted separately for men and women because their ages for role achievement have been noted to differ (Elliott & Simmons, 2011; U.S. Census Bureau, 2011). Descriptive statistics on the percentage who had achieved, anticipated achieving, or never intended to achieve the tran­ sitional and gradual roles, as well as the mean age at which they anticipated/reported achieving the transitional and gradual roles, are reported in Table 2. Participants were dropped from the analyses if they did not intend to ever achieve the role (i.e.., were not currently a parent and did not anticipate ever having a child; see Table 2).

The population comparisons used for the cohabitation analyses were provided by Manning et al. (2014). Manning et al. (2014) reported the age of first cohabitation in the late 20th century male EAs to be 23.5. Men in this study anticipated/reported cohabitating at similar age (M = 23.90, SD = 4.46), t(160) = 1.14, p = .257, d = 0.08. Manning et al.

(2014) reported the age of first cohabitation in the late 20th century female EAs to be 22.2 years of age.

However, women in this study anticipated/reported cohabitating at a significantly later age (M = 25.70, SD = 4.17), t(76) = 7.38, p < .001, d = 0.84.

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Data from the 2000 Census (i.e., the last census of the 20th century) were available for the marriage analyses. Men in this study anticipated/reported marrying at a similar age (M = 26.79, SD = 4.67) as the age reported by the 2000 Census (i.e., M = 26.4), t(152) = 1.04, p = .302, d = 0.14. However, women in this study anticipated/reported marrying at a significantly later age (M = 28.18, SD = 4.52) than the age reported by the 2000 Census (i.e., M = 24.7), t(70) = 6.49, p < .001, d = 0.77. Data from the 2000 Census were also available for the parenting analyses, but only for women. The women in this study anticipated/reported having their first child at a significantly later age (M = 29.33, SD = 4.67) than the age reported by the 2000 Census (i.e., M = 24.9), t(62) = 7.54, p < .001, d = 0.95. For men, the population comparison was pulled from the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG; Martinez et al., 2012). The men in this study anticipated/ reporting having their first child at a significantly later age (M = 27.84, SD = 4.17) than the age cal­ culated by the 2002 NSFG (i.e., M = 25), t(127) = 4.98, p < .001, d = 0.44.

Regarding gradual role achievement (see TABLE 2 Role Achievement, Average Age Reported or Anticipated, and Average Self-Efficacy Achieved Role

%

Age M (SD)

Self-Efficacy M (SD)

Anticipated %

Age M (SD)

Self-Efficacy M (SD)

Never Intend %

Cohabitating Men

34.1% 22.05(3.76) 3.37 (0.62) 58.5% 29.94(4.51) 3.00 (0.50)

7.4%

Women 26.9% 23.48(3.51) 3.29 (0.68) 58.0% 26.65(4.09) 2.99 (0.60) 15.1% Marriage Men

18.2% 23.81(4.13) 3.24 (0.50) 72.1% 27.55(4.50) 3.23 (0.48)

9.7%

Women 18.3% 25.19(2.11) 3.27 (0.62) 69.9% 29.05(4.68) 3.01 (0.57) 11.8% Parenting Men

13.1% 22.00(2.85) 3.61 (0.45) 61.9% 29.05(3.29) 3.01 (0.71) 25.0%

Women 11.8% 23.20(3.26) 3.63 (0.52) 61.3% 30.49(3.95) 2.42 (0.60) 26.9% Religious beliefs Men

90.3% 15.81(4.17) 2.86 (1.06)

9.7% 23.53(4.13) 1.78 (0.65)

0.0%

Women 86.0% 16.77(4.45) 2.94 (1.06) 14.0% 31.46(7.77) 2.13 (0.93)

0.0%

Political beliefs Men

81.8% 18.38(2.13) 2.55 (1.08) 15.4% 23.89(6.84) 1.80 (0.90)

2.8%

Women 69.9% 18.97(2.99) 2.62 (1.15) 10.7% 28.30(6.67) 2.68 (0.90) 19.4% Health Men

312

46.5% 21.10(3.40) 3.37 (0.62) 53.5% 25.47(6.52) 2.97 (0.73)

0.0%

Women 53.5% 21.67(3.15) 3.32 (0.70) 46.5% 27.74(5.91) 2.99 (0.69)

0.0%

Table 2), the proportion of EAs in this study who perceived they had achieved each role was higher, overall, than the proportion of EAs in this study who perceived they had achieved each transitional role.

EAs in this study who perceived they had achieved the role, on average, reported doing so in late adolescence for religious and political beliefs and in early emerging adulthood for managing their own health. EAs in this study who perceived they had not achieved the role, on average, reported expecting to do so toward the end of emerging adulthood or beginning of young adulthood.

To explore gender differences in participants’ role achievement, independent-samples t tests were conducted. Separate t tests were conducted for those who had already achieved the role and those who had not yet achieved the role (see Table 3). All results were in the direction of women anticipating/ reporting achieving the roles at a later age than men, but the difference was only significant for EAs’ anticipated age of role achievement for cohabitat­ ing, marriage, parenting, and religious beliefs. A small to medium effect size was demonstrated for the anticipated age of transitional role achieve­ ments (i.e., cohabitating, marriage, parenting), and a large effect size was demonstrated for anticipated age of achieving religious beliefs.

Role-Specific Self-Efficacy Descriptive statistics on the participants’ average role-specific self-efficacies are reported in Table 2.

To analyze the hypothesis that participants closer in age to the age at which they anticipated role achievement would feel more efficacious in that role, a series of regressions were conducted. The independent variable for each regression was an age difference variable, which was calculated by taking the absolute value of the difference between participants’ current age and the age that they anticipated/reported achieving each role. The dependent variable for each regression was the role-specific self-efficacy. Separate analyses were conducted for those who reported achieving the role and those who had not yet (see Table 5).

Only the political self-efficacy model for those who reported already achieving the role was sig­ nificant. Specifically, the longer it had been since the participants perceived that they had achieved the gradual role of identifying their political beliefs, the more efficacious they felt in engaging in and expressing those beliefs. However, caution is expressed in interpreting this result given that if a Bonferroni-corrected p value (.004) was used to

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Powell and Gaines | Emerging Adults' Role Timing and Self-Efficacy

determine significance then the model would no longer be significant.

To explore gender differences in participants’ self-efficacies for the transitional and gradual roles, independent samples t tests were conducted.

Separate t tests were conducted for those who had already achieved the role and those who had not yet achieved the role (see Table 4). There were no significant differences in men and women’s self-efficacies for those who had already achieved the role. For those who had not yet achieved the role, men perceived themselves as having higher marriage and parenting self-efficacies than women, whereas women perceived themselves as having higher political self-efficacy than men. A medium effect size was demonstrated for marriage selfefficacy, and a large effect size was demonstrated for parenting and political self-efficacies. All other role-specific self-efficacies for those who had not yet achieved the corresponding roles were not significantly different based on gender.

Discussion Emerging adulthood is a time of exploration, a time of identity development, and a time for engaging in tasks (e.g., mastery experiences; Bandura, 1977) that are directly associated with the roles typically indicative of “being an adult” (Arnett, 2000, 2006, 2014). For an increasing number of EAs, this time of development occurs on college campuses (National Center for Education Statistics, 2019).

The current study aimed to examine the age at which EAs anticipated achieving transitional and gradual adult roles, the relation between their anticipated age of role achievement and perceived competency for the matching role, as well as explore if there were differences in the age of role achievement or role-specific self-efficacy, especially based on gender. With a proportion of the EAs in this study reporting that they had already achieved subsets of the examined roles, separate analyses were conducted for those who had and those who had not yet achieved each role. This shift in the study’s analytic strategy provided information on two distinct subgroups of EAs (i.e., those who had achieved and those who had not yet achieved the examined roles) and is in line with prior work emphasizing heterogeneity among EAs (Arnett, 2000; Lanctot & Poulin, 2018).

EAs’ Achievement of Adult Roles We had hypothesized that EAs would anticipate achieving adult roles at later ages than even recent EA cohorts in the late 20th century. The prediction

was supported for female EAs, such that female EAs in this study anticipated achieving each transitional role (i.e., cohabitating, marriage, and parenting) at later ages than was reported of female EAs in the early 2000s. For male EAs, though, only for parenting was there a difference between their anticipated age of role achievement and the age of role achievement for EAs in the early 2000s.

The results partially support Manning et al. (2014) who found no change in male EAs’ timing of first cohabitation. However, contrary to the stability they and others (Manning, 2013) reported, our sample of female EAs did anticipate cohabitating at a later age than individuals who were EAs in the early 2000s. The results also support prior work on the continued trend of both male and female EAs delaying marriage and parenthood until later in life (Bloome & Ang, 2020; Manning et al., 2014; Martin et al., 2018; Matthew & Hamilton, 2016; Smock & Schwartz, 2020; Stykes, 2011). Moreover, the educational, sexual, and technological revolu­ tions postulated by Arnett (2000, 2006) to have initiated the life stage of emerging adulthood may TABLE 3 Gender Differences in Role Achievement Achieved t tests

Anticipated t tests

Role

df

t

g

df

t

g

Cohabitating

79

1.57

0.39

155

2.33*

0.39

Marriage

45

1.25

0.39

175

2.04*

0.33

Parenting

30

1.06

0.40

157

2.44*

0.41

Religious beliefs

206

1.50

0.23

28

3.61

1.33

Political beliefs

207

1.64

0.24

35

1.75

0.65

Health

124

0.94

0.17

123

1.75

0.35

***

Note. Effect size is reported using Hedges’ g as men and women subsample sizes are different. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

TABLE 4 Gender Differences in Role-Specific Self-Efficacy Achieved t tests

Anticipated t tests

Role Self-Efficacy

df

Cohabitating

83

−0.53

0.13

154 −0.12

Marriage

47

0.15

0.05

187 −4.02*** 0.62

Parenting

32

0.11

0.04

163 −5.26*** 0.86

Religious beliefs

234

0.54

0.07

27

1.20

0.45

Political beliefs

206

0.42

0.06

35

2.64

0.98

Health

124

0.48

0.09

129

0.17

0.03

t

g

df

t

g

*

0.02

Note. Effect size is reported using Hedges’ g as men and women subsample sizes are different. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

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be particularly salient and impactful to female EAs choosing to delay their entrance into transitional roles. It is also interesting to note that the examined role with the largest proportion of EAs in this study indicating they do not intend to achieve was for parenting. This finding aligns with the growing number of adults choosing to remain childless (Stone, 2020).

Although a priori hypotheses were not posited for timing of gradual roles, examination of the reported and anticipated timing of those roles suggest distinct groups of EAs. Specifically, a large proportion of EAs felt as though they had achieved gradual roles at an earlier point in their lives (i.e., adolescence or the beginning of emerging TABLE 5 Impact of Age of Role Achievement on Self-Efficacy F

df

p

Radj2

0.72

1, 79

.397

.00

0.52

1, 45

.476

.00

0.24

1, 30

.628

.00

2.01

1, 205

.139

.01

7.17

1, 206

.008

.03

t

β

0.85

.10

−0.72

−.11

−0.49

−.09

1.49

.10

2.68*

.18

1.18

.11

−0.62

−.05

−1.08

−.08

−0.72

−.06

−0.53

−.10

0.99

.17

0.04

.00

Achieved Models Cohabitating Age Diff Marriage Age Diff Parenting Age Diff Religious beliefs Age Diff Political beliefs Age Diff Health

1.38

1, 124

.242

.00

Age Diff Anticipating Models Cohabitating

0.38

1, 154

.538

.00

Age Diff Marriage

1.16

1, 173

.284

.00

Age Diff Parenting

0.52

1, 156

.470

.00

Age Diff Religious beliefs

0.28

1, 27

.603

.00

Age Diff Political beliefs

0.98

1, 35

.330

.00

Age Diff Health FALL 2021 PSI CHI JOURNAL OF PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH

314

Age Diff

0.00

1, 122

.966

.00

Note. “Age Diff” signifies the variable calculated for the difference between participants’ current age and the age at which they reported achieving the role. * p < .05.

adulthood), whereas a smaller proportion antici­ pated it would be much later before they achieved the examined gradual roles (i.e., later years of emerging adulthood or into young adulthood).

Although it may be that those who achieved the gradual roles earlier in their life explored various possibilities for their religious and political beliefs, it may also be that many foreclosed (Marcia, 1966) into those beliefs based on familial socialization of specific beliefs (Hatemi et al., 2009; Okagaki et al., 1999; Stoppa & Lefkowitz, 2010). Further, those anticipating a later achievement of gradual roles may be exploring their possibilities before committing to any specific beliefs (i.e., moratorium; Marcia, 1966), or they may be avoiding exploring or committing to any specific beliefs (i.e., diffusion; Marcia, 1966). However, participants’ role explora­ tion was not examined in this study and, therefore, these ideas remain speculative.

EAs’ Role Achievement and Self-Efficacy It was hypothesized that the difference between EAs’ current age and the age at which they antici­ pated/reported achieving the examined roles would be associated with their current self-efficacy for the corresponding role. However, data in this study did not support that supposition. Of the 12 models analyzed, only the political self-efficacy model for those who had already achieved the role of identifying their political beliefs was significant.

EAs in this study who perceived that they achieved their political beliefs at a younger age felt the most efficacious in engaging in and describing their political beliefs. However, caution is expressed in interpreting this result given the number of analyses conducted and the increased potential of type I error. The overall lack of significant results for this set of analyses suggests that years since role achievement or years until role achievement may not be associated with EAs’ current self-efficacy for the role. Social role theory (Allen & van de Vliert, 1984) indicates that social roles such as the transitional and gradual roles examined in this study are evolving and multifaceted in nature. As such, years since role achievement or years until role achievement may be less of an influence on role-specific self-efficacy than other sources of self-efficacy (Bandura, 1977).

Gender Differences in Role Achievement and Self-Efficacy Exploratory analyses revealed that male EAs antici­ pated achieving the three examined transitional

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Powell and Gaines | Emerging Adults' Role Timing and Self-Efficacy

roles and the gradual role of religious beliefs at a significantly earlier age than female EAs. Historically, for the examined transitional roles of marriage and parenting, women have achieved the role before men (Kreider & Ellis, 2011; Manning et al., 2014). However, it appears our sample of female EAs hoped to not only catch up to their male EA counterparts when it comes to the timing of role achievement but surpass them in delaying the onset of roles, especially those transitional in nature. This finding has societal ramifications given that women have more limited reproductive years than men, and pregnancies later in adulthood are associated with increased risk for both the mother and the child (Breart, 1997; ESHRE Capri Workshop Group, 2005; Waldenström, 2016).

Additionally, in heterosexual relationships, men tend to be slightly older than their female partners (Buss, 1989; Sprecher et al., 1994). Therefore, time will be necessary to see if men’s anticipated age of achieving transitional roles shifts because women’s anticipated age increases beyond theirs, if the age discrepancy reported in romantic unions will be reduced or flipped, or if women’s anticipated age of achieving transitional roles will end up not aligning with their actual age of role onset.

We acknowledge, though, that caution should be taken in interpreting this set of findings due to the number of analyses conducted and the increased potential of type I error.

Exploratory analyses were also conducted to investigate whether there were gender differences in EAs’ self-efficacy. Male and female EAs’ perceptions of self-efficacy for the roles did not differ for those who reported already achieving the examined roles. For those who were anticipating achieving the examined roles in the future, male EAs reported higher perceptions of self-efficacy for the transitional roles of marriage and parenting than females; there was no gender difference for cohabitating. Only for the gradual role of political beliefs did female EAs reported higher perceptions of self-efficacy than male EAs. For the other gradual roles, there were no significant differences in men’s and women’s perceived self-efficacy.

It may be that actual role engagement or proxy role engagement through mastery experiences (Bandura, 1977) is key for reflecting on one’s own self-efficacy. Without such actual or tangential experiences, individuals may be naïve about their own competency. Such naïveté has been demonstrated previously when individuals were asked to postulate about their future (Weinstein,

1980). Although Weinstein (1980) argued that individuals tended to be overconfident in their capabilities, post-hoc analysis of our data indicated that EAs who reported that they had already achieved the role felt more efficacious in all of the corresponding roles, except for marriage self-efficacy in which there was not a significant difference for those who had and had not yet achieved the corresponding role. It may be that achieving the role earlier in emerging adulthood permitted those EAs to enhance their competency for the corresponding role. However, it may also be that the EAs in this study who had not yet achieved examined roles were naïve when it came to their own perceptions of their self-efficacy. Prior research has shown that, with feedback, individuals can correct their perceptions of competency (Butler et al., 2008), reiterating the importance of proxy role engagements (i.e., mastery experiences; Bandura, 1977) during the period of emerging adulthood. Such correction may be particularly relevant for the transitional roles examined, given their social nature, but may be less apparent for the gradual roles as individuals can choose whether to express their beliefs or share their behaviors with others. It is acknowledged, though, that caution should be taken in interpreting this set of findings due to the number of analyses conducted and the increased potential of type I error.

Implications These results may be particularly useful to community and academic mental health and career counselors who work regularly with apprehensive EAs during this time of exploration and transition.

Many of the examined roles were intended or reported to be achieved during the college-aged years, and as such, college may be an ideal place for providing opportunities for EAs to practice various adult roles and engage in mastery experiences related to the roles, subsequently fostering their perceived competency for the roles. Given that not all EAs enroll in college and that a proportion of EAs believed that they had achieved certain gradual roles during adolescence, this information may also be beneficial to high school counselors in their work with students before they graduate.

Furthermore, to lessen EAs’ concerns regarding the extent to which they are “on time” for achieving transitional and gradual roles, the heterogeneity in this study’s participants, as well as the heterogeneity documented in others’ studies (Arnett, 2000; Lanctot & Poulin, 2018), should be highlighted.

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Limitations and Future Directions Throughout this study, those EAs who had not yet achieved the examined roles reported their anticipated age for doing so. Their anticipation for the role is an intention. Although intentions can be predictive of behavior, an intention does not always imply later behavior (Sutton, 1998).

Therefore, some EAs in the sample may purpose­ fully or unintentionally achieve the roles before they anticipated doing so, others may purposefully or involuntarily never achieve the examined roles.

Future researchers should consider employing longitudinal techniques to follow adolescents into emerging and young adulthood to assess the accuracy of their intentions for role achievement and the individual and contextual factors associated with their accuracy. Continued research in this line of inquiry would also benefit from obtain­ ing a larger, more diverse community sample to further examine the heterogeneity in EAs’ timing of transitional and gradual role achievement, as well as their perceived competency for those roles, with the appropriate power for such analyses. Such a diverse sample would also allow for meaningful person-centered analyses to identify subgroups of EAs, and this more idiosyncratic information may be of additional use to practitioners in academic and community settings who work directly with EAs.

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Conclusion Guided by social role theory (Allen & van de Vliert, 1984) and the recognition that emerging adulthood is a time of great transition (Arnett, 1998, 2006), this study examined EAs’ perceptions of their timing of role achievement and their current selfefficacy for those roles. This study was strengthened by the inclusion of both transitional and gradual roles. The data suggest that EAs intend to continue to delay the timing of transitional roles that are prototypical of “adulthood” (e.g., marriage and parenting) and that this is especially true for female EAs. The data also provide preliminary insight into EAs’ intentions for achieving gradual roles.

Moreover, the data suggest that EAs’ perceived selfefficacy for the examined roles is also in flux during emerging adulthood and impacted by individual factors such as gender. Last, the data indicated that temporal proximity between current age and age of anticipated/reported role achievement was not pre­ dictive of EAs’ perceptions of their self-efficacy for corresponding roles. Although additional research is warranted, this study provides an initial glimpse into EAs’ expectations and current perceptions of

themselves. Furthermore, this information may enhance practitioners’ ability to provide timely information and interventions to EAs regarding their transition to adulthood.

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The effects of need for autonomy and preference for seeking help from informal sources on emerging adults’ intentions to access mental health services of common mental disorders and suicidal thoughts. Advances in Mental Health, 10(1), 29–38. https://doi.org/10.5172/jamh.2011.10.1.29 Xiao, J. J., Chatterjee, W., & Kim, J. (2014). Factors associated with financial independence of young adults. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 38(4), 394–403. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcs.12106 Author Note. Darcey N. Powell https://orcid.org/0000-00016076-9741 Stephanie Gaines https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7367184X Stephanie Gaines is now a graduate student in at Lipscomb University pursuing a Master of Education in Special Education.

The authors declare no conflicts of interest. These data are from a larger study that served as an independent study project for Stephanie Gaines. Her project was supported in parts by a 2015–16 Fall Undergraduate Research Grant from Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology.

Aspects of the project were presented at the 2017 Society for the Study of Emerging Adulthood biennial conference, the 2017 Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology annual meeting, and the 2017 Society for Research on Child Development biennial meeting.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Darcey N. Powell, Department of Psychology, Roanoke College, Salem, VA, 24153. Phone: 540-375-4956.

Email: DPowell@roanoke.edu.

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It Gets Better: Themes of Redemption in the Coming Out Narratives of LGBTQ+ Adults Steven V. Rouse*, Lauren E. Chu, and Joshua A. Gash Social Sciences Division, Pepperdine University

ABSTRACT. A qualitative analysis of 151 coming out narratives written by members of sexual minority groups or gender minority groups suggested that individuals who disclosed their identity experienced supportive responses from friends and family members more often than nonsupportive ones.

The majority of the narrative writers described the coming out process as leading to enhanced levels of communion, as many of the narratives recounted strengthening or forming relationships, feeling understood more authentically by others, and experiencing greater unity and connectedness with others. Many others described an empowering experience that led to a greater sense of personal identity and self-determination. Results suggest that the coming out process can have positive effects on the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals, marking a positive turning point in their life histories.

Keywords: LGBTQ+, coming out narratives, narrative self theory

F

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or individuals who identify with a nonhetero­ sexual orientation or a noncisgender identity (e.g., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other; LGBTQ+), identity disclosure is often nec­ essary, as cisgender heterosexuality is the assumed identity for most people unless otherwise stated.

This process of expressing one’s sexual identity or gender identity to others is known as “coming out.”

As early as 1984, concealing one’s identity, or being “closeted,” was recognized as causing discontent, and coming out appeared to be helpful for identity integration (Lewis, 1984). Coming out was posited by early researchers as a powerful catalyst for the development of a healthy sense of self (Cass, 1984; Wells & Klein, 1987). Later, Vaughan and Waehler (2010) specified a constellation of five Coming Out Growth Domains in which positive impacts are ob­ served in the lives of LGBTQ+ individuals, including greater authenticity/honesty, a clearer personal/so­ cial identity, improved resilience, social/relational enhancement, and advocacy/generativity. Although

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these five domains of growth were identified based on a literature review, a factor analysis performed by Vaughan and Waehler identified two correlated fac­ tors that accounted for the majority of the variance in these domains. One factor, which they called Individualistic Growth, was defined by its load­ ings for items related to strengthening one’s own identity, improved mental health, and enhanced well-being. The second factor, which they called Collectivistic Growth, was defined by loadings for items related to generativity, strengthening of relationships, and passion for advocacy.

Although the focus on growth domains can lead to an assumption that the consequences of disclos­ ing one’s identity are exclusively positive, research has shown that the coming out experience can be stress-inducing (Charbonnier & Graziani, 2016), and identifying oneself as part of a stigmatized gender minority group or sexual minority group can have many negative implications. Stewart’s (2018a) three-volume edited work highlighted the

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*Faculty mentor

Rouse, Chu, and Gash | LGBTQ+ Coming Out Narratives

wide range of risk factors experienced by LGBTQ+ individuals, including suicidality (Garrett, 2018), homelessness and sexual trafficking (Newton, 2018), bullying (Clift & Thelenwood, 2018), hate crime vic­ timization (Stewart, 2018b), the curtailment of one’s freedom of expression (Hazard, 2018), substance abuse (Sérráno & Wiswell, 2018), unfair profiling and criminalization by law enforcement (Hubbard, 2018), the refusal to provide adequate healthcare (Perone & Perone, 2018), antigay discrimination (Crockett, 2018), and sexually transmitted infec­ tions (Wilson, 2018). Because the choice to disclose one’s identity may increase the likelihood of these risks, many LGBTQ+ individuals choose to remain closeted (O’Brian, 2018).

Because the decision to disclose one’s identity can bring an opportunity for personal growth but can also place a person at greater risk of negative consequences, researchers have sought to deter­ mine factors that predict positive and negative results of coming out. One category of factors appears to be the response of the person to whom one’s LGBTQ+ identity is disclosed (Solomon et al., 2015). Ryan and colleagues (2015) found that the negative reactions from the first person to whom an LGBTQ+ individual disclosed their identity pre­ dicted increased levels of depression and decreased levels of self-esteem. Further demonstrating the complexity of the coming out experience, Rothman and colleagues (2012) showed that LGBTQ+ youths who had not come out engaged in more risky behaviors and experienced poorer health than peers who had come out; however, among those who had come out to their parents, those whose parents were unsupportive engaged in riskier behaviors and experienced poorer health than whose parents responded supportively. Manning (2015) found that LGBTQ+ adults recounted many positive responses from friends and family members to whom they disclosed, including the offer of open communication channels, affirmations about the importance of the relationship, positive laughter and relationship-enhancing jokes, and nonverbal expressions of love, such as hugs. Conversely, other negative responses were also recounted. These included denial of the truth of the self-disclosure, judgmental religious condemnations, antagonistic questions or comments, shaming, and even aggres­ sion. These reactions from people in one’s social circle can have a powerful effect on the well-being of the LGBTQ+ person (Roe, 2017).

A second category of factors that appear to be predictive of positive and negative results of coming

out is the motivation for disclosure (Bekker & Belt, 2006). For example, Li and Samp (2019) argued that, by having clear goals for disclosure, LGBTQ+ people have more control or autonomy over their future. Individuals with clear disclosure goals, like wanting to be true to oneself (self-oriented disclosure goal) or wanting to connect with another LGBTQ+ person (nonromantic relational disclosure goal), had fewer symptoms of depression and better self-esteem after coming out than those who did not.

A third category of factors that might be predic­ tive of the outcomes of coming out is the identity of the group by which one is accepted. Research has suggested that being out in certain groups, namely LGBTQ+ communities, may evoke stron­ ger feelings of support and lead to better mental health outcomes than being out in non-LGBTQ+ communities. Notably, Jordan and Delaty (1998) found that coming out to and being accepted by other LGBTQ+ people predicted satisfaction with social support more than any other group, indicating that the type of social support provided by other LGBTQ+ individuals satisfies a need that heteronormative groups cannot provide. This may explain why some seek out an LGBTQ+ community in addition to the heterosexual support systems of their friends and family.

In recent years, in an effort to better under­ stand the complexity of the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals who have chosen to disclose their identities, researchers have conducted empiri­ cal explorations of LGBTQ+ coming out narratives (Dunlap, 2014; Klein et al., 2015; Manning 2015; Tamagawa, 2018). Through narrative research, sev­ eral aspects of the previously enigmatic coming out process have been elucidated, including the role community and culture play in coming out. Culture has been shown to greatly influence the coming out process. For example, Tamagawa (2018) used coming out narratives to analyze the social and familial repercussions for different members of the LGBTQ+ community in Japan; mothers tended to respond more negatively to their daughters coming out as lesbian or transgender than to their sons coming out as gay or transgender. This suggests that a stronger underlying cultural preference exists in Japan for the preservation of heteronormativity in women than men. Furthermore, lesbians had greater social acceptance than women who came out as transgender, which could indicate a culturebound hierarchy among queer women. Although studies like this utilize narratives to understand the

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coming out process from a social viewpoint, they overlook the ultimate positive or negative effects of coming out for LGBTQ+ individuals. Although noting that reactions from others is important, narratives ultimately best reflect the experience of their author and can inform the reader about the author’s personal and interpersonal growth and development.

Previous narrative research has demonstrated how complex the coming out process is. To assume precision and linearity in the process is to minimize the individuality of the experience (Klein et al., 2015). However, there is evidence that narrative analyses of coming out stories can be effective at identifying common themes. For example, Dunlap (2014) found two consistent thematic motifs in the coming out narratives of 30 LGBTQ+ individuals: enhanced personal development and increased empathy.

By analyzing many published theories on com­ ing out, Eliason and Schope (2007) established five elements typical of coming out narratives: (a) feeling of differentness, (b) identity formation as a developmental process, (c) the need for disclosure, (d) the need for pride or cultural immersion, (e) and the need for identity integration or synthesis.

These elements of the coming out process are not distinct stages that occur consecutively; rather, several elements will often occur simultaneously.

For example, LGBTQ+ individuals can experience a need to disclose their identity to others while also forming that identity during development.

The model, although helpful in generalizing core elements, is not comprehensive, because it does not consider the individual differences and situational complexity that could lead to different outcomes.

Reflecting on this model, Klein et al. (2015) asserted that coming out is a continuous experi­ ence, which suggests that it may be difficult to deter­ mine what benefits or hardships occur at any one point in time during this ongoing process. Klein et al. systematically examined the recorded narratives of LGBTQ+ participants and found the process to be quite dynamic. Each interview was distinct, which reflected the diversity of the participants, the timing and development within the coming out process, and the variable life contexts and social surround­ ings of the individual at the time. Despite providing beneficial qualitative data about the development of self in LGBTQ+ teens, this study did not use quantifiable data and thus could not come to any reproducible conclusions. This highlights the value of a quantifiable coding system that could be used

to systematically raise inferences about the coming out narratives of LGBTQ+ adults.

Narrative self theory may provide techniques that allow us to capture the richness of personal nar­ ratives while utilizing a quantifiable scoring system (McAdams, 1993). By viewing personality through narratives, McAdams (2006a, 2006b) has identi­ fied common genres and themes of life histories, both for those provided by research participants and those available in archival records of personal histories. One genre of personal narrative is the redemption sequence, a series of events that could be of particular interest to the LGBTQ+ coming out experience. Redemption sequences generally follow a protagonist who enjoys an advantageous or oth­ erwise positive early life, sometimes simultaneously witnessing the misfortunes or suffering of others.

Because of this, the protagonist may, for example, develop a sensitivity to the negative experiences of others or a strong set of moral principles. Next, obstacles or problems arise in the protagonist’s life that are eventually overcome or solved. Finally, the protagonist forms goals that are beneficial to others in the future (Guo et al., 2016).

Three elements are required to deem a narra­ tive redemptive: a baseline state, a negative event or consequence leading to a state subjectively worse than the baseline, and a positive outcome either caused by the negative event or experienced despite it. The negative event is subjective and only has to be seen as affectively or instrumentally negative by the protagonist. Examples include losing a loved one, relationship, or job. The positive outcome can be achieved through a tangible promotion or reward, or a more abstract achievement such as increased resilience, knowledge, or gratitude for what remains (McAdams, 2006b).

The concept of redemption provides a rich foundation for empirical research. McAdams et al. (2000) found that redemptive sequences were observed more often among those with a proclivity to plan for the future to ensure positive outcomes for themselves. Among those with this focus, redemptive themes were four times more likely to be present compared to those who lacked this perspective. Moreover, redemption sequences were associated with positive signs of psychological well-being such as self-acceptance and an enhanced feeling of vocation.

McAdams demonstrated that redemptive life narratives are not homogeneous, varying on the degree to which they include language reflective of enhanced agency, enhanced communion,

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Rouse, Chu, and Gash | LGBTQ+ Coming Out Narratives

and ultimate concerns (McAdams, 2006b). First, enhanced agency themes are seen in redemptive sequences in which the individual emerges from the negative phase with a greater sense of selfconfidence, personal strength, or sense of power.

Second, enhanced communion themes refer to redemptive sequences in which the emergence from the negative phase is associated with strengthened familial, social, or romantic relationships. Third, ultimate concern themes reflect an encounter with religious, spiritual, meta-physical, or philosophical insights and awareness. A narrative coding rubric (Foley Center for the Study of Lives, 2009) provides guidance for reliably rating personal narratives on the presence or absence of these redemptive themes. Although this has been a useful rubric for empirical research purposes, no published research has explored these redemptive themes in the com­ ing out stories of LGBTQ+ individuals.

The present exploratory study was designed to address two different research questions about coming out narratives. First, how do the writers of coming out narratives describe the initial impact of their decision to come out to their family and friends? This study was developed, in part, to determine the extent to which people who have already come out to their social circles recount actual positive or negative reactions from family and friends.

Second, to what extent are redemptive themes evident in coming out narratives? Specifically, we sought to examine how often LGBTQ+ adults describe the coming out process as resulting in Enhanced Agency (such as the enhancement of personal power, self-confidence, efficacy, or personal resolve), Enhanced Communion (such as strengthening of relationships, family ties, friend­ ship, and love), and Ultimate Concerns (such as the confrontation or significant involvement with spiritual, metaphysical, or deeply philosophical aspects of life).

Method Archival Data Coming Out Space (www.comingout.space) is an online repository where LGBTQ+ individuals can upload narratives of their coming out experi­ ences; the goal of the website is to build a diverse, international library of personal narratives, thereby allowing other LGBTQ+ individuals to find relat­ able experiences and a sense of community.

Narrative writers are allowed to determine for themselves whether to keep their narratives anony­ mous, semianonymous (e.g., first name only), or

fully identified. Moreover, writers can determine whether or not to provide demographic data, and the narratives can either be uploaded as written text, a video-recorded statement, or both.

A proposal for this study was reviewed by the Pepperdine University (Seaver College) Institutional Review Board (IRB; proposal #19-01957). Because this study constituted an analysis of existing and publicly available documents, it was designated as exempt from IRB review.

Participants At the time of data collection, 233 written narratives had been uploaded; these excluded individuals who only uploaded video recordings without a textual narrative. All 233 were written in English, although this was not a requirement of the repository. Of these, 79 narratives were written by individuals who identified their ages as being 17 or younger at the time of writing; these narratives by self-identified legal minors were excluded from analyses. In addi­ tion, three narratives were written by individuals who identified as allies of the LGBTQ+ community but did not themselves hold a queer identity; these narratives were also excluded from analyses. This resulted in a final set of 151 narratives by LGBTQ+ adults; self-reported demographic information is presented in Table 1. Each narrative was saved as a separate text file to allow for linguistic coding; these text files are archived at the URL provided in the Author Note.

Procedure Coding Themes of Redemption The narrative themes of redemption were coded by two of the authors using a rubric developed by the Foley Center for the Study of Lives (2009).

Specifically, we dichotomously coded the themes of Enhanced Agency (EA; “Score +1 if the transforma­ tion from negative to positive in the story produces or leads to an enhancement of the protagonist’s personal power or agency, if it builds self-confi­ dence, efficacy, or personal resolve, or if it provides the protagonist with insight into personal identity”; para. 18), Enhanced Communion (EC; “Score +1 if the transformation from negative to positive in the story produces or leads to an enhancement of the protagonist’s personal relationships of love, friend­ ship, family ties, and so on”; para. 19), and Ultimate Concerns (UC; “Score +1 if the transformation from negative to positive involves confrontation with or significant involvement in fundamental existential issues or ultimate concerns. The event brings the protagonist face-to-face with death, God, and or

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religious/spiritual dimensions of life”, para. 21).

Interrater reliability was evaluated based on kappa statistics; kappa values for EA (κ = .43; χ2 = 32.55, df = 1, p < .001), EC (κ = .60; χ2 = 55.99, df = 1, p < .001), and UC (κ = .48; χ2 = 44.40, df = 1, p < .001) all TABLE 1 Demographic Characteristics Reported by Writers of Coming Out Stories Used for Analyses Identification

Proportion

Gender Male

43.71%

Female

17.88%

Trans man

2.65%

Trans woman

2.65%

Genderqueer

2.65%

Agender

2.00%

Gender nonbinary

1.32%

Transgender

1.32%

Sexual Orientation Gay

58.94%

Bisexual

15.23%

Lesbian

14.57%

Queer

7.28%

Pansexual

3.97%

Asexual

2.65%

Questioning

2.65%

Polyamorous

2.00%

Demisexual

1.32%

Heterosexual

1.32%

Race and Ethnicity

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White

37.09%

Asian

6.62%

Black

4.64%

Hispanic or Latinx

3.97%

Mixed

3.31%

Other

2.00%

Indian/South Asian

1.32%

Middle Eastern

1.32%

Native American

0.66%

Pacific Islander

0.66%

Note. The demographic category terminology was created by the developers of the repository from which the narratives were obtained. Narrative writers were allowed to select as few or as many descriptors as they identified with (including multiple identities within a category), so percentages do not total 100%. For the Age category, many writers selected multiple ages, presumably indicating both the age they were at the time of the narrative’s events and the age they were at the time of writing the narrative; in such cases, only the latest age is reported.

Table continnues on next page.

exceeded .40, which has been recommended as an acceptable level of interrater reliability for research purposes1 (Fleiss, 1981; Landis & Koch, 1977).

Coding Interpersonal Responses The primary and secondary authors also coded a series of interpersonal experience variables: initial positive family response (IPFR), initial negative family response (INFR), initial positive social response (IPSR), and initial negative social response (INSR). We coded each of these four variables dichotomously to indicate that the writer did or did not describe positive and negative familial and social responses. Interrater reliability estimates for IPFR (κ = .71; χ2 = 76.53, df = 1, p < .001), INFR (κ = .82; χ2 = 102.89, df = 1, p < .001), IPSR (κ = .63; χ2 = 59.39, df = 1, p < .001), and INSR (κ = .61; χ2 = 56.73, df = 1, p < .001) represented strong levels of agreement between the two coders.

Because two coders worked independently, a final score for IPFR, INFR, IPSR, and INSR was given as “1” if both coders indicated that the response was described in the narrative.

Results Initial Interpersonal Responses to Coming Out Proportional Data Table 2 indicates the number of narratives describ­ ing positive and negative responses from family and friends. Although 46.4% of the narratives described receiving a positive response from one’s family when coming out to them, 37.7% described a nega­ tive familial response; this statistically significant dif­ ference in proportions suggests a greater likelihood of positive familial response than negative, at least for the narratives within this data set. Experiences with positive responses from some family members and negative responses from other family members were described in 16.6% of the narratives. In contrast, 32.5% of the narratives described neither positive nor negative responses; these narratives either focused on the responses of their friends or focused on the writer’s self-realization of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Positive responses from friends were described Because many people are familiar with Cohen’s (1988) rule of thumb of .70 as a minimum level for coefficient alpha as a measure of reliability, kappa statistics sometimes seem inappropriately low. However, kappa and alpha are on different scales, so the interpretive strategies and guidelines for the two statistics are not interchangeable. Both Fleiss (1981) and Landis and Koch (1977) suggested that .40 is an acceptable agreement level. Although higher levels of proportional agreement (upon which kappa is based) might be needed for high-stakes decisions, for basic research this is seen as acceptable levels of agreement between raters.

1

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in 44.4% of the narratives while negative responses from friends were described in 19.2% of the narra­ tives, once again representing a significantly greater likelihood of positive than negative responses in this sample. Only 10.6% of the narratives described positive responses from some friends and negative responses from other friends, and 47.0% of the narratives did not describe either positive or negative friend responses, focusing instead on the individual’s self-realization or the responses of family members.

Comparisons of the responses from family and friends showed a greater proportion of recounting negative responses from family than from friends (37.7% to 19.2% respectively); each proportion fell outside the confidence interval for the other proportion, indicating statistical significance of this difference. However, the proportions of narratives recounting positive responses from family and friends (46.4% and 44.4%) only differed negligibly.

The data suggest that the responses given by family members were more often addressed in coming out narratives than the responses of friends.

Although 102 narratives (67.5%; 95% CI = 59.5%, 74.9%) described either a positive or negative familial response (or both), 80 narratives (53.0%; 95% CI = 44.7%, 61.1%) described either a positive or negative friend response (or both). This suggests that coming out to one’s family was a more common subject of the narratives than coming out to friends.

Narrative Examples The narratives themselves often reflected the complexity of the coming out experience in regards to the reactions from family members. For example, Kaleigh (a bisexual woman in the 18–22 age group) wrote It took me a week after her moving before I told my mother I was bi. The first thing she said was, “Bisexuality isn’t a thing.” I got upset and left the room. We haven’t talked about it since. And later I told my step-mother and father who were super supportive of me and said they loved me.

Some writers feared a negative family reaction, and their family members reacted as they expected; even then, however, sometimes levels of acceptance became more positive over time. Stormy (a lesbian woman in the 18–22 age group), for example, wrote about being raised in a conservative religious family and being confident of how her family would react.

She wrote

Of course, I didn’t come out to my mom for a long time. It took years for me to accept myself. By the time I did, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I was a TABLE 1, CONTINUED Demographic Characteristics Reported by Writers of Coming Out Stories Used for Analyses Identification

Proportion

Religion Christian

17.88%

Catholic

11.26%

Atheist

8.61%

Agnostic

6.62%

Spiritual/nondenominational

5.30%

Muslim

3.31%

Mormon

2.00%

Other

2.00%

Hindu

1.32%

Jewish

0.66%

Age 23–29

42.38%

18–22

30.46%

30–39

9.93%

50–59

4.64%

40–49

3.97%

60–69

2.65%

70–79

0.66%

Note. The demographic category terminology was created by the developers of the repository from which the narratives were obtained. Narrative writers were allowed to select as few or as many descriptors as they identified with (including multiple identities within a category), so percentages do not total 100%. For the Age category, many writers selected multiple ages, presumably indicating both the age they were at the time of the narrative’s events and the age they were at the time of writing the narrative; in such cases, only the latest age is reported.

TABLE 2 Narratives Describing Positive and Negative Responses From Family and Friends After Coming Out Response From Family No positive response

Positive response

Response From Friends Total

No positive response

Positive response

Total

No negative n = 49 33% n = 45 30% response [25% to 41%] [23% to 38%]

n = 94 62% n = 71 47% n = 51 34% n = 122 81% [54% to 70%] [39% to 55%] [26% to 42%] [74% to 87%]

Negative response

n = 32 21% n = 25 17% [15% to 49%] [11% to 24%]

n = 57 38% n = 13 9% n = 16 11% n = 29 19% [30% to 46%] [5% to 14%] [6% to 17%] [13% to 26%]

Total

n = 81 54% n = 70 46% N = 151 [45% to 62%] [38% to 55%]

n = 84 56% n = 67 44% N = 151 [47% to 64%] [36% to 53%]

Note. The number of narratives in each category is accompanied by a percentage and a 95% Confidence Interval for that percentage.

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lesbian. So that’s what I told my mom. We had some serious fights over it and for a long time I thought it would never get bet­ ter. But she talks to me about it now, asks questions. She told me she’d come to my wedding if I ever find someone I wanted to spend my life with. She said that as long as she never saw us doing anything she would be fine, which at first seemed like an awful thing to say. But then, I can’t ask her to choose me over her faith because when it comes right down to it I wouldn’t choose her over my sexuality.

In the majority of the narratives, however, when familial reactions were mentioned they were more positive than negative. For example, Jay (a gay man in his mid to late 20s) was afraid that his highly masculine and athletic father would be ashamed of his sexual identity. He recounted Too nervous to face my family in person, I emailed my parents. I anxiously waited, minute by minute, waiting for my world to implode. But it didn’t. The world didn’t end. My Dad, the athlete, the public personality, still loved me. He said to me: “Today, as your dad, I am telling you this, you need to hold your head up high, be who you are, and live your life as you see fit! We are all different—that’s what makes this world such a cool place.”

The reactions from friends, when recounted, also tended to be more positive than expected.

Brian (a bisexual man in his 50s) wrote I first came out as bi to my wife about thirty years ago. Next, about a decade later, I told a gay couple I know, one of whom was part of a circle of longtime friends. It was several more years before I began, very slowly, widening that coming out circle to other friends and acquaintances, as well as exploring my identity with the online gay community... I guess I never believed it was not really the trauma I imagined it would be.

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Many narrative writers described the process of coming out to be easier with each friend that they told. Binh (a gay man in his mid to late 20s) wrote that he came out to one friend by simply passing him an index card with his secret written on it. After that, he wrote

What I hadn’t fully comprehended at that time was that coming out is a process that never ends. Handing every person an index card with the words “I’m gay,” or even the words “I’m very gay,” wasn’t going to work. I’m a planner. Shortly after I came out to my first friend, I created an Excel spreadsheet with all my college and high school friends so that I could keep track of which friends I had or hadn’t yet come out to. Over the next year, I came out to one friend after another. I wanted to always have one-on-one interactions to make them more personal. I would tell my friend over lunch or dinner or while we took a walk around campus. No more index cards this time—it was all verbal.

Nevertheless, although many writers recounted positive experiences with their friends, some did experience rejection, like Fred (a gay man in his 40s). He wrote At the ripe age of 47, I finally decided to come out as “gay” after all of these years of hiding my sexuality. I suppose I went through a midlife wild spell expressing my freedom and being recognized as a gay man for the first time. Unfortunately, all of my friends did not accept this new lifestyle, so I lost many good friends. My family was a bit more difficult although I am sure they suspected I was gay since childhood, they only thought I was going through a midlife crisis and would run back into the arms of a woman and remarry. After a couple of close relationships, I finally remarried about two years ago to the man of my dreams. My parents accept him, but continue to be in denial about my life and think one day I will renounce my gayness.

Thus, although most of the narrative writers who described reactions from friends and family members recounted positivity, some narrative writers recounted relationships that experienced permanent negative changes after coming out.

Redemptive Themes of Coming Out Narratives Proportional Data Themes of redemption were observed in 122 narratives (80.8%; 95% CI = 73.6%, 86.7%). Most commonly observed was Enhanced Communion which was observed in 98 narratives (64.9%; 95%

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CI = 56.7%, 72.5%), followed by 57 narratives demonstrating Enhanced Agency (37.7%; 95% CI = 30.0%, 46.0%) and 13 narratives demonstrating Ultimate Concerns (8.6%; 95% CI = 4.7%, 14.3%).

The coding for the three redemptive themes was statistically uncorrelated (EC and EA: χ2 = 0.49, ϕC = .06, p = .48; EC and UC: χ2 = 0.12, ϕC = .03, p = .73; EA and UC: χ2 = 0.43, ϕC = .05, p = .51), suggesting that the presence or absence of one redemptive theme had no bearing on the presence of absence of any other theme.

Narrative Examples Narratives with themes of Enhanced Communion often described the development of a sense of con­ nectedness after coming out, sometimes replacing communities that had been rejecting. Josh (a gay man in his mid to late 20s) had been highly active in his church community until he came out, and that community was no longer supportive of him.

He wrote I was told I was unsuitable to work with children and lost my job as a big brother.

I lost some of my dearest friends, but I had gained a community of people who accepted me, loved me. Years later, I’ve grown. I’ve had my family realize my struggles and love me. I have a job. I have a group of friends who are real, authentic, and care about me.

Often, that sense of community was with other people who identify as LGBTQ+. For example, Connie (a transgender woman in her 40s) wrote Moving to Manhattan in my late teens was a positive gamechanger for my evolution.

I had a wonderful ally and sister in my roommate, who was also in transition. The late, great International Chrysis took us both under her wing, informing us about the world and its ever-changing view of the Trans life and how to negotiate it.

However, often the Enhanced Community theme was expressed in relation to existing rela­ tionships that became stronger because of the honesty and authenticity of the narrative writer.

For example, Ian (a bisexual man in his mid to late 20s) recounted coming out via text messages to his friend while in high school. He wrote I typed to Amy something along the lines of, “What if I’m attracted to both

sexes? Would you think differently of me?”

She gave me the most sincere, yet brutal response. “You’re bisexual, you idiot! No, I actually love you more for being able to open up to me about this.” She was the first person I came out to and gave me a lot of support.

Other narratives described themes of Enhanced Agency. In many cases, the coming out experience gave the narrative writer a clearer vision of goals for the future. Paul (a gay man in his 30s) wrote I continue to explore and express my own personal narrative as it evolves and leads me in unpredictable directions. I find myself at a point in my life where few things seem impossible. I want to be a genuine painter, a prolific and honest artist, a great friend and husband, and remain open to whatever opportunities come my way. None of that would be possible if I hadn’t been honest with myself.

In other cases, this experience left the writer with a clearer understanding of themselves. For example, Emily (a genderqueer person in the 18–22 age group) wrote about having to work through several questions in coming to a greater sense of self-understanding. They wrote Would I really ever date a girl? If I truly loved her, yes. Do I still like guys? Obviously.

Do I like girls or guys more? I’m not sure.

Am I bisexual? Most likely. What’s my gender? Do I feel like a man? Or a woman?

I feel like both but at different times. I struggled a lot while trying to figure out my sexuality and gender… Little by little, I was putting the pieces together and everything started making actual sense… I’ve accepted myself, and that’s good enough for me at the moment. I might feel differently six months to a year from now. But, I finally have real answers to give myself now.

Many others described enhanced self-confi­ dence, such as Tyler (a gay man in the 18–22 age group) who wrote So the gist of it is: I came out twice and got my heart broken instantly. Why look forward to that? Well, it’s led to the most beautiful and empowering experiences to have shaped me as a human. It takes

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everyone different amounts of time, and it will change and grow as we do. So don’t be afraid, and if you are, that’s okay. It’s a different experience for everyone, and you’ll always have someone to love and support you. Take life day by day at your pace, and when you’re ready you’ll know.

The least common category of redemptive themes was Ultimate Concerns, in which the person developed a clearer philosophical, religious, or spiritual worldview. Although many narrative writ­ ers described a religious upbringing that was not inclusive of their dawning LGBTQ+ identities (and, in many cases, this caused significant distress), few narratives explicitly described this as an area of growth in their experiences. Although fewer in number, those who included Ultimate Concerns themes in their narratives differed on the extent to which their worldviews changed as a result of their coming out experience. Some narrative writers dramatically adjusted their worldviews during the coming out experience. For example, an anonymous narrative writer (a gay man in the 18–22 age group) wrote I started questioning my beliefs and ask­ ing myself why would God create gay people, and then tell us that it’s wrong to be gay. That was always confusing to me.

Eventually, I examined the Bible for other contradicting passages and ended up as an atheist. Later the same year, I started deeply thinking about my sexuality and telling myself that I had to come to terms with it. And when I did, a weight was lifted off my shoulders.

Other narrative writers, however, remained in the same religion while adjusting their worldview to a more inclusive one. Carey (a gay man in his late 20s) experiences a religious crisis related to his conservative Christian worldview, and though he changed Christian denominations he maintained a commitment to Christianity. He wrote

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On a whim I did an internet search for “LGBT Friendly” churches in my town.

There was just one. The reverend had made a blog post about a transgender teen struggling for acceptance in a different church. She reminded her followers that all LGBT individuals are welcome at her church… Without even knowing who I was, the reverend read a poem during

the service. “Come to the altar,” she read, “if you’re gay, straight, transgender. The addict or the saint. Come to the altar”… I had never experienced such acceptance.

God didn’t create me just to be hated. He created me to be strong and to be happy.

After years of hating myself, hating my family, hating God, I’m finally happy. I’ve finally found love and joy. Coming out for me was less an announcement and more of a process. I had to learn that faith and orientation are not separate. That even though some Christians may reject me, God doesn’t. God is love.

Still others describe remaining in the same religious faith, though coming to their own under­ standing of what their faith means in their lives.

For example, Kathleen (a bisexual and demisexual woman in her 30s) has remained in the church in which she was raised while coming to an under­ standing of how to live her life in the context of that faith. She wrote I’m still trying to figure out what to do with my life, religion, and family, but being more sure of who I am and knowing that God/the Universe loves me more when I’m being me, is the only way I will find happiness.

Discussion The first research question of the present study addressed the interpersonal responses given by members of one’s social circle when coming out to them. Although fear of rejection and other negative responses is a common reason why many LGBTQ+ individuals choose to conceal their sexual orientation or gender identity, we found a greater level of positive response than negative response for the narratives included in our data. This does not negate the reality of rejection experienced by many LGBTQ+ individuals; approximately one-third of the narratives recounted negative familial responses and approximately one-fifth of the narratives recounted negative friend responses. The coming out process is associated with social rejection for a substantial number of LGBTQ+ individuals within this sample—more often by family members than by members of one’s friend group. Nevertheless, positive support from friends and family were recounted at a significantly higher rate than the rate at which narratives recounted rejection and other negative responses.

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Rouse, Chu, and Gash | LGBTQ+ Coming Out Narratives

The second goal of the present study was to examine the extent to which three different redemptive sequences could be observed. As defined by McAdams (2006b), a redemption sequence exists when a distressing, upsetting, or otherwise negative experience leads to some type of improvement in a person’s life, and approxi­ mately four out of every five coming out narratives described this type of sequence. Most commonly, in approximately two out of every three narratives, the coming out process was described as leading to enhanced levels of communion as many of the narratives recounted strengthening existing or forming new relationships, feeling understood more authentically by others, and perceiving an increased sense of unity and connectedness with others. Less often, in approximately one out of every three nar­ ratives, the coming out experience was associated with an increased sense of agency. Indeed, many of these LGBTQ+ adults described the coming out process as an empowering one that led to a greater sense of personal identity and self-determination.

More rarely observed, in less than one out of every ten narratives, was a description of the coming out experience leading to a greater level of engagement with ultimate concerns, such as the exploration of philosophical or religious dimensions of life.

Although several narratives in our data set described the coming out process in the context of a person’s evolving religious or philosophical worldview, these were few and far between. Despite the fact that 35% of the narrative writers self-identified a monotheistic religious worldview when selecting their demographic descriptors, this aspect of their identity was relevant to coming out experiences in only a small proportion of the narratives.

Taken together, a few consistent themes emerged. First, these results suggest that the coming out process most often had positive effects on the lives of these LGBTQ+ narrative-writers. Their expe­ riences described relationship-enhancing responses from the individuals’ social circles more often than relationship-weakening responses. Additionally, the majority of the narratives described one or more redemptive sequences, suggesting that the process of coming out appears to play a role in the move­ ment from or through an unpleasant state of being to a more pleasant one. Second, however, these results highlight the variability of the coming out experience. Although positive results of coming out were most common among these coming out sto­ ries, the results clearly show that there were numer­ ous exceptions to this pattern. The observation that

most narrative writers experienced improvements in their lives should not obscure the experiences of the individuals in our data set who, although fewer in number, experienced intrapersonal turmoil and the dissolution of relationships when they no longer concealed these aspects of their identities.

Third, these findings suggest that there might be two different (though not mutually exclusive) functions of coming out. For some individuals, coming out served an interpersonal function, allowing for the strengthening of relationships and a feeling of being known more authentically by others. For other individuals, coming out served an intrapersonal function, allowing for a clearer sense of self-understanding and a greater sense of personal empowerment.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research The benefits of using online archival data were two-fold; narrative writers from many geographic regions were able to share their experiences and each writer had the ability to determine for themselves the extent to which they wish to remain anonymous. However, the present study has limita­ tions; most notably, the use of archival data may limit the generalizability of the findings. Because this set of narratives represents a self-selected sample, it is possible that LGBTQ+ individuals who voluntarily submit coming out narratives may differ from LGBTQ+ individuals who do not wish to make their coming out experiences public. For example, although positive social reactions from one’s interpersonal circle were more common in these narratives than negative reactions were, and although the majority of these narratives described redemption sequences, the possibility must be considered that these positive effects led the writers to choose to share their narratives and that people who experienced negative repercus­ sions are dissuaded from sharing their narratives publicly. Individuals who experienced an increased level of agency or communion as a result of com­ ing out may be more inclined to share their story because of benefits that they gained. Biases may also exist within the sample; those who experienced increased agency may be more empowered to share their story to the online repository leading to a falsely inflated sample of narratives with enhanced agency, whereas those who experienced enhanced communion could feel the need to help others in the same situation leading to a falsely inflated sample of narratives with enhanced communion.

A second limitation relates to the ambiguity of

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the task itself. The repository of coming out stories has no formal prompt, simply serving as a place for individuals to share their coming out narratives.

That task may mean different things to different people, resulting in a very heterogeneous set of writing samples. More specificity in the task might have resulted in more clarity in research findings.

A third limitation relates to the qualitative nature of coding writing samples. Although we attained sufficient levels of interrater reliability and although we used the most empirically conserva­ tive approach by only formally assigning a code when both coders independently indicated it, any qualitative analysis raises concern that different coders might have assigned codes differently. We are making the narratives and data set available at the URL provided in the Author Note because we recognize the value of the same procedure being replicated by others.

To minimize the impact of these limitations, future research should examine coming out nar­ ratives that were gained in a more systematic man­ ner than our archival data. By actively recruiting LGBTQ+ participants and providing a structured prompt and essay task, researchers could examine whether the high frequency of redemptive themes and of positive social response were unique to this archival data or more generalizable to the LGBTQ+ population.

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Implications Despite these limitations, the present study contrib­ utes to the literature on the coming out experiences of LGBTQ+ adults. First, this study supports Li and Samp (2019) who found that the goals for disclos­ ing one’s sexual orientation (such as a desire to be true to one’s self) were more predictive of positive outcomes than were the responses from friends and family members. Notably, there was a scarcity of certain types of data that would have been expected based on previous research; 32.5% of authors omitted reactions from family and 44.0% omitted reactions from friends. Instead, the focus of many narratives was on one’s own desire to be authentic and self-aware, regardless of the social outcome.

Social acceptance of one’s identity was once thought to be critical to the coming out process and healthy development of self (Ryan et al., 2015; Tamagawa, 2018), but if this were true, social responses should be omnipresent across all narratives.

Second, and more broadly, the present study adds to the existing literature by demonstrating the positive impact of the coming out experience

in the lives of the majority of these narrative writ­ ers. This is consistent with Vaughan and Waehler’s (2010) multifaceted concept of Coming Out Growth Domains; although Vaughan and Waehler initially identified five growth domains, they found that these positive benefits aligned in a two-factor structure that was defined by Individualistic Growth and Collectivistic Growth. Using the growth domains construct as a foundation for a series of interviews with bisexual individuals, Brownfield et al. (2018) renamed these two domains Intrapersonal Growth and Interpersonal Growth and documented rich examples of both themes. The enhanced com­ munion and enhanced agency themes coded in the present study echo these two growth domain dimensions. Despite the anxiety with which many narrative writers described disclosing their identi­ ties, the majority of the narratives described redemp­ tive outcomes and were characterized by more positive emotional experiences than negative ones.

This should not obscure the reality of the familial rejection, social isolation, and intrapersonal turmoil experienced by a smaller proportion of narrative writers. Nevertheless, these analyses add to the exist­ ing literature by revealing the coming out process as a redemptive one, marking a positive turning point in the life histories of many LGBTQ+ adults.

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Journal of Social Psychology, 127(2), 191–197. http://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.1987.9713679 Wilson, C. (2018). The impact of HIV over the past 35 years. In C. Stewart (Ed.), Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans at risk: Vol. 3, The middle-aged, seniors, and current topics (pp. 1–21). ABC-CLIO. Author Note. Steven V. Rouse https://orcid.org/0000-00021080-5502 Lauren E. Chu https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0798-3911 Joshua A. Gash https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4411-2090 Lauren A. Chu is now at the Biobehavioral Health Department, College of Health and Human Development, Pennsylvania State University.

Joshua A. Gash is now at Sarah Cannon Research Institute, Nashville TN. The narratives used for analyses and the coded data are available at https://osf.io/42je8. The exploratory nature of this research was preregistered at https://osf.io/x9gr4. We have no conflicts of interest to disclose.

Correspondence concerning this manuscript should be addressed to Steven V. Rouse, Social Sciences Division, Pepperdine University, Malibu CA 90263-4372.

Email: steve.rouse@pepperdine.edu

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https://doi.org/10.24839/2325-7342.JN26.3.330

The Indirect Effect of Worry on Daytime Sleepiness Among College Students Alexis Hatcher1, Tiphanie G. Sutton1,2, and Matt R. Judah3* 1 Old Dominion University 2 Virginia Consortium Program in Clinical Psychology 3 Department of Psycholological Science, University of Arkansas

ABSTRACT. Daytime sleepiness is a prevalent problem among college students that is associated with impairment in academic functioning and mental health risk. Sleep disturbances, such as difficulty falling and staying asleep, are associated with daytime sleepiness. Sleep disturbances are predicted by worry and may serve as mechanisms by which worry conveys risk for daytime sleepiness. The present study examined the indirect effect of worry on daytime sleepiness through difficulty falling asleep and difficulty staying asleep in a cross-sectional undergraduate sample (N = 172). An indirect effect of worry on daytime sleepiness was observed through difficulty staying asleep, ab = .02, 95% CI [.001 .04]. There was no indirect effect through difficulty falling asleep, ab = −.01, 95% CI [−.03, .01]. The study contributed to the understanding of how worry is associated with daytime sleepiness among college students. Additional research using longitudinal and experimental design is needed to further test difficulty staying asleep as a mechanism between worry and sleepiness.

Keywords: daytime sleepiness, worry, sleep disturbance, caffeine use, college students

D

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aytime sleepiness, defined as a feeling of drowsiness with difficulty staying awake (Hershner & Chervin, 2014), is prevalent among college students. About half of college students report daytime sleepiness (Oginska & Pokroski, 2006). Understanding factors that lead to daytime sleepiness is important because it is associated with impairments in academic performance, socialization, and daily life functioning, such as driving, as well as mental health problems (Hershner & Chervin, 2014; Waitling, 2020). For example, daytime sleepiness is associated with lower grade point average (GPA) and more psychological distress (Becerra et al., 2020). Thus, there is a need to better understand risk factors for daytime sleepiness among college students in order to reduce negative outcomes.

Sleep disturbances (e.g., difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep) are important determinants of insufficient sleep, and subsequently, daytime

sleepiness (Alapin et al., 2000). Many people who experience sleep disturbances blame them on worry (Armstrong & Dregan, 2014), which is defined as uncontrollable perseverative thought about nega­ tive possibilities (Borkovec et al., 1983). This is also true among college students, who attribute their sleep disturbances to worry more than anything else (Lund et al., 2010). The perception that worry interferes with sleep is consistent with theoretical proposals that worry interferes with sleep (Harvey, 2002a; Pillai & Drake, 2015). The cognitive model of insomnia (Harvey, 2002b) proposes that worry about sleep deficits and their daytime consequences increases arousal and distress, thereby interfering with sleep. Evidence supports this theory, showing that worry increases arousal (Newman & LLera, 2011). For example, worry is associated with lower cardiac vagal control (Thayer et al., 1996; Weise et al., 2020), a feature of autonomic arousal that is associated with sleep disturbances (Hall et al.,

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*Faculty mentor

Hatcher, Sutton, and Judah | Indirect Effect of Worry on Sleepiness

2004). In other words, worry is counterproductive to the relaxed state that facilitates undisturbed sleep. In addition to worry about sleep, college students are prone to worry about academic perfor­ mance, which is associated with sleep disturbance (Ginsberg, 2006). Indeed, sleep disturbances, including difficulty falling and staying asleep due to worry, are symptoms of generalized anxiety dis­ order (GAD; APA, 2013), a disorder which has the hallmark symptom of excessive and uncontrollable worry. Sleep disturbances are reported by many college students, with 43% reporting that it takes longer than 30 minutes to fall asleep (Becker et al., 2018). Additionally, chronic sleep disturbances (i.e., those present at least three nights a week for at least six months) have been reported by approximately 10% of college students (Taylor et al., 2011). Thus, gaining better understanding of the factors related to sleep disturbances may shed light on processes that convey risk for daytime sleepiness.

Research has also indicated that worry is associ­ ated with sleep disturbances. A recent meta-analysis found that worry was related to later sleep onset and less total sleep time (Clancy et al., 2020). A daily process study suggested that worry predicts sleep disturbances, including delayed sleep onset and reduced total sleep time. There was no evidence of a reciprocal relationship, suggesting that worry pre­ dicts disturbed sleep, but not vice versa (McGowan et al., 2016). A 24-hour sleep monitoring study using actigraphy found that worry was associated not only with subjective sleep disturbances, but also with objective disturbances, including difficulty stay­ ing asleep (Weise et al., 2020). Such studies indicate that worry may convey risk for sleep disturbances, and thereby, for daytime sleepiness.

In addition to worry, caffeine consumption may result in sleep disturbances and thereby increase daytime sleepiness. Caffeine is a widely used stimulant that keeps caffeine consumers alert and awake throughout the day (O’Callaghan et al., 2018), with effects that last up to 7.5 hours (Hershner & Chervin, 2014). More than 90% of college students consume caffeine (Mahoney et al., 2019). However, when caffeine is consumed at later hours, it has been known to cause difficulty falling asleep at night. By caffeine being an adenosinereceptor antagonist in the central nervous system, it has consequences on certain brain functions, such as sleeping, alertness, and cognitive functioning (O’Callaghan et al., 2018). One study found that even small doses of caffeine are associated with sleep disturbances and daytime sleepiness (Roehrs

& Roth, 2008). Another study found that 300mg of caffeine administration increased night-time worry and sleep disturbances (Omvik et al., 2007).

To understand the association of worry with sleep disturbances and daytime sleepiness, it is important to consider the role of caffeine use.

Overall, there is evidence that worry is associ­ ated with difficulty falling asleep and difficulty staying asleep, and that such sleep disturbances are associated with daytime sleepiness. However, research has not yet tested whether difficulty falling and staying asleep explain the association of worry with daytime sleepiness in college students. The goal of the present study was to test indirect effects of worry on daytime sleepiness through difficulty falling asleep and difficulty staying asleep. We hypothesized that there would be indirect effects of worry on daytime sleepiness through both dif­ ficulty falling asleep and difficulty staying asleep.

Because caffeine consumption has been associated with worry (Omvik et al., 2007) and with sleepiness (Hershner & Chervin 2014; Roehrs & Roth, 2008), caffeine was included as a covariate in the analyses.

Method Participants The study sample consisted of 203 undergraduate students from a large southeastern university. Data were collected in April through July of 2020. Of these, 172 completed all of the measures in the study and were included in analyses. The sample was predominately cisgender women (n = 128; see Table 1). One participant identified as a trans­ gender man, and the rest as cisgender men (n = 43). The mean age of the sample was 21.37 years old (SD = 3.64). The sample was racially diverse, with 88 (51.2%) identifying as White, 79 (45.9%) identifying as Black, 11 (6.4%) as Asian, 7 (4.1%) as Native American, 4 (2.3%) as Pacific Islander, and 2 (1.2%) as Middle Eastern. Nineteen (11%) identified as Latinx. Due to the large number of women in the study, gender was included as a covariate in the analyses.

Measures The Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ; Meyer et al., 1990) was used to measure worry. The PSWQ consists of 16 items with Likert-type scale response options ranging from 1 (not at all typical) to 5 (very typical). The PSWQ has been shown to have good internal consistency and test-retest reli­ ability (Meyer et al., 1990). Validity of the PSWQ is supported by its high correlation with other

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Indirect Effect of Worry on Sleepiness | Hatcher, Sutton, and Judah

measures of worry (Stöber, 1998). Internal consis­ tency was excellent in this study, α = .93.

The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI; Buysse et al., 1989) was used to measure typical sleeping patterns that occurred within the last month. The PSQI was designed to assess seven components of sleep quality. These components are assessed by nine questions about sleep times, habits, and sleep disturbances. The PSQI has been used to identify good and poor sleep quality among individuals (Buysse et al., 1989). The PSQI has been shown to have good convergent validity when compared to sleep logs (Backhaus et al., 2002). In the current study, items 5a and 5b were used to assess difficulty falling asleep and difficulty staying asleep, respectively.

The Epworth Sleepiness Scale (ESS; Johns, 1991) was used to measure daytime sleepiness. The ESS consists of eight items that evaluate sleepiness and fatigue throughout the day in various activities.

Response options range from 0 (no chance of dozing) to 3 (high chance of dozing). Psychometric studies indicate that the ESS has good reliability and is moderately correlated (r = −.43) with the ability to maintain wakefulness (Johns, 1991). Internal consistency was good in this study (α = .79).

Caffeine usage was assessed by asking par­ ticipants to estimate the number of caffeinated TABLE 1 Demographic Information Frequency

Percentage

Gender Cisgender woman

128

74.4

43

25.0

1

0.6

18–19

52

30.2

20–21

67

39.0

22–23

25

14.6

24–25

13

7.6

5

2.9

White/European American

88

51.2

Black/African American

79

45.9

Asian American

11

6.4

Native American

7

4.1

South Asian/Pacific Islander

4

2.3

Middle Eastern

2

1.2

Hispanic/Latinx

19

11.0

Cisgender man Transgender man Age

26 Race and Ethnicity

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beverages (e.g., coffee, espresso, energy drinks, caffeinated soft drinks) they drink on a typical day. Due to its relatively low caffeine content, tea was not included. The total number of caffeinated beverages was used as a covariate in the analyses.

Procedure All procedures were approved by the institu­ tional review board at Old Dominion University.

Participants were recruited through an online platform through which they enrolled in studies for psychology course credit. After providing informed consent, participants completed the measures online. Measures were administered in a standard order for all participants (i.e., demographics, PSWQ, PSQI, EPSI).

Analytic Strategy The hypotheses were tested using the PROCESS macro (version 3.2; Hayes, 2017a, 2017b). Indirect effects of worry on sleepiness through difficulty falling asleep and difficulty staying asleep were tested with gender as a covariate using 10,000 bootstrapped samples. Confidence intervals (95%) were estimated around each coefficient.

Results Participants reported a relatively high average level of worry (M = 52.09, SD = 14.15) with 25.0% meet­ ing the suggested cutoff (62) for undergraduates (Behar et al., 2003). Aggregate daytime sleepiness (M = 7.81, SD = 4.64) fell in the higher normal range, with 34.3% scoring in the lower normal range (0–5), 40.1% in the higher normal range (6–10), 19.2% in the mild/moderate excessive range (11–15), and 5.8% in the severe excessive range (>16). Other descriptive statistics and zeroorder correlations of the variables are displayed in Table 2. Unstandardized coefficients are reported here, and standardized coefficients are displayed in Figure 1. Worry was associated with difficulty falling asleep, a1 = .02 [.01, .04], and with difficulty staying asleep, a2 = .02 [.01, .03]. Difficulty falling asleep was not associated with daytime sleepiness, b1 = −.36 [−.99, .28], but difficulty staying asleep was associated with daytime sleepiness, b2 = .71 [.01, 1.41]. The confidence interval of the indirect effect through difficulty falling asleep, a1b1 = −.01, did not exclude zero [−.03, .01]. But the confidence interval of the indirect effect through difficulty staying asleep, a1b1 = .02, did exclude zero [.001 .04]. There was a direct effect of worry on daytime sleepiness (cˊ = .08 [.03, .13]). The total effect

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Hatcher, Sutton, and Judah | Indirect Effect of Worry on Sleepiness

(c = .09 [.04, .14]) accounted for seven percent of the variance in daytime sleepiness. The model was examined again after including caffeine use as a covariate, and this did not result in any substantive change in the model.

Discussion Our findings reveal expected and novel associations among worry, sleep disturbances, and daytime sleepiness. The association of worry with difficulty falling and staying asleep in our data is consistent with past research (Clancy et al., 2020; McGowan et al., 2016) and the cognitive model of insomnia (Harvey, 2002a). Adding to the existing literature, we found that difficulty staying asleep explained an association of worry with daytime sleepiness. The findings support the viability of the hypothesis that worry may lead to difficulty staying asleep, which in turn leads to more daytime sleepiness. But this needs to be examined using experimental and prospective research design before causality can be inferred. Overall, our study has implications for understanding daytime sleepiness among college students. The findings may be taken as evidence that, among college students, worry is related to sleepiness even after controlling for caffeine use.

Further, there is evidence of a specific potential mechanism of worry’s association to daytime sleepi­ ness that merits examination in future studies.

Notably, the hypothesized indirect effect of worry on sleepiness through difficulty staying asleep remained significant after controlling for caffeine use, indicating that the indirect effect is not accounted for by caffeine use. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no indirect effect of worry on sleepiness through difficulty falling asleep. This indicates that difficulty staying asleep, rather than falling asleep, explains why worry and daytime sleepiness are related. It is possible that worry interferes with staying asleep through elevated arousal (Tousignant et al., 2016; Yeh et al., 2015), resulting in night-time wakings. Alternatively, college students may restrict sleep periodically for academic or social reasons. One study found that sixty percent of college students stayed up all night at least once (Thacher, 2008), which may occur in tandem with next-day deadlines and related worries. It is reasonable to think that so-called “allnighters” might also result in daytime sleepiness and more sleep disturbances. Another possibility is that daytime sleepiness may be associated with napping (Tsai & Li, 2004), which may lead to dif­ ficulty staying asleep at night (Tsai & Li, 2004; Ye

et al., 2015), and thereby lead to nighttime worry about being able to sleep. Research using prospec­ tive design is needed to better understand the temporal associations found in this study and to test the various potential explanations for our findings.

Further, more research is needed to examine how worry, sleep disturbances, daytime sleepiness, and daytime dysfunction are related in the context of anxiety and sleep disorders.

The findings complement data indicating that worry is associated with sleep disturbances (Weise et al., 2020). Studies have shown that worry is related to sleep disturbances (Clancy et al., 2020) and that worry predicts later sleep disturbances, but not vice versa (McGowan et al., 2016). More research is needed to understand the role of worry content, which likely differs across populations. In adults with insomnia, it is worry about sleep in particular, rather than general worry, that is associated with sleep disturbances (O’Kearney & Pech, 2016).

This may also be the case in other nonstudent adults (Lancee et al., 2015). Our findings are FIGURE 1 The Indirect Effect of Worry on Sleepiness Difficulty Falling Asleep

−.09

.26*** .27*** (.26***)

Worry

Sleepiness

.17*

.26

***

Difficulty Staying Asleep

Note. Worry = PSWQ; Difficulty Falling Asleep = PSQI item 5a; Difficulty Staying Asleep = PSQI item 5b; Sleepiness = ESS. * p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

TABLE 2 Means and Correlations 1

2

3

4

5

1. Worry

–

2. Difficulty falling asleep

.26***

–

3. Difficulty staying awake

.28***

.48***

–

4. Sleepiness

.25

.05

.18*

–

5. Caffeine use

.09

.10

.15*

.06

–

M

52.09

2.56

2.75

7.81

1.54

SD

14.15

1.23

1.13

4.64

1.83

***

Note. Worry = PSWQ; Difficulty Falling Asleep = PSQI item 5a; Difficulty Staying Asleep = PSQI item 5b; Sleepiness = ESS. * p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.

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more consistent with studies examining college students (e.g., Takano et al., 2012), which generally have observed an association between worry and sleep disturbances. Worry content among college students includes worries about finances, academic performance, and social adequacy (Fam et al., 2020), which may put college students in a unique position for worry to impact sleep. For example, it is possible that college students may experience worry about looming coursework or exams, leading to more nonsleep-related worry that is likely to occur at nighttime.

The results of this study may have implications for understanding the high comorbidity between GAD and insomnia (Kurshid, 2018) and expanding the conceptualization of the negative consequences of worry. Currently, sleep interference is considered a symptom of GAD, but outcomes of such interfer­ ence, such as daytime sleepiness, are not described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th ed. (DSM-5). Understanding more distal consequences of worry has implications for treatments, such as cognitive behavioral therapy for comorbid GAD and insomnia (Belleville et al., 2016), and possibly for understanding other symp­ toms associated with worry and GAD that might be due in part to sleepiness. For example, difficulty concentrating is both a symptom of GAD (APA, 2013) and a consequence of daytime sleepiness (Alapin et al., 2000). However, our study did not examine individuals with GAD. Therefore, future research would be needed to investigate whether daytime sleepiness is a common feature of individu­ als with GAD and whether daytime sleepiness results from worry’s interference with sleep.

There are several limitations. The use of an undergraduate student sample limits the generaliz­ ability of conclusions to the broader population.

A further limitation to generalizability is that the data were collected during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. The cross-sectional design does not allow for temporal associations among variables to be examined, and future research is needed to overcome this limitation. Our reliance on self-report measures may be addressed by future research that includes objective sleep measures, student characteristics (e.g., GPA, course load), and timing of caffeine consumption. Further, research distinguishing between worry topics may identify whether there are particular stressors that interfere with sleep, ultimately leading to daytime sleepiness.

Subsequent studies may include looking at immi­ nent stressors such as the student’s course load, major of study, and extracurricular activities that

may help identify those interferences. Because the present study sought to explain an overview of the indirect effects of worry on daytime sleepiness, caf­ feine was not evaluated in depth. Future researchers should look to evaluate the time caffeine consump­ tion was consumed with looking at specifics such as dosage, or number of drinks, at specific times to acquire a better understanding for the indirect effects of caffeine on daytime sleepiness.

Overall, this data adds to the existing literature by identifying a possible mechanism that explains why worry and sleepiness are related among college students. Understanding that difficulty staying asleep plays a role in the association between worry and daytime sleepiness has important implications for clinicians working with college students who present with worry and sleepiness, both highly prevalent in this population (Hershner & Chervin, 2014). Future research building on this may be helpful in further testing whether the indirect effect in this paper indicates a mechanism of daytime sleepiness and whether there may be other mechanisms in the relation of worry with sleepiness.

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Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 9(2), 107–116. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15402002.2011.557992 Thacher, P. V. (2008). University students and the ‘all nightery’: Correlates and patterns of students’ engagement in a single night of total sleep deprivation. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 6(1), 16–31. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15402000701796114 Thayer, J. F., Friedman, B. H., & Borkovec, T. D. (1996). Autonomic characteristics of generalized anxiety disorder and worry. Biological Psychiatry, 39(4), 255–266. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0006-3223(95)00136-0 Tousignant, O. H., Taylor, N. D., Suvak, M. K., & Fireman, G. D. (2019). Effects of rumination and worry on sleep. Behavior Therapy, 50(3), 558–570. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2018.09.005 Tsai, L., & Li, S. (2004). Sleep patterns in college students: Gender and grade differences. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 56(2), 231–237. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0022-3999(03)00507-5 Waitling, C. N. (2020). Young drivers who continue to drive while sleepy: What are the associated sleep- and driving-related factors? Journal of Sleep Research, 29(3), e12900.https://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jsr.12900 Weise, S., Ong, J., Tesler, N. A., Kim, S., & Roth, W. T. (2020). Worried sleep: 24-h monitoring in high and low worriers. Biological Psychology, 94(1), 61–70. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2013.04.009 Ye, L., Johnson, S. H., Keane, K., Manasia, M., & Gregas, M. (2015). Napping in college students and its relationship with nighttime sleep. Journal of American College Health, 63(2), 88–97. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2014.983926 Yeh, Z-T., Wung, S-K., Lin, C-M. (2015). Pre-sleep arousal as a mediator of relationships among worry, rumination, and sleep quality. International Journal of Cognitive Therapy, 8(1), 21–34. https://dx.doi.org/10.1521/ijct.2015.8.1.21 Author Note. We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Special thanks to Psi Chi Journal reviewers for their support.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Matt R. Judah, Department of Psychological Science, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701.

Email: mjudah@uark.edu

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https://doi.org/10.24839/2325-7342.JN26.3.336

Need for Cognition and Women’s Implicit Associations: Breaking Stereotypes?

Sarah M. Olshan, Christine Vitiello*, and Kate A. Ratliff* Department of Psychology, University of Florida

ABSTRACT. People often associate women more with emotions, or affect in general, compared to men (e.g., Barrett & BlissMoreau, 2009); however, it is unknown whether some women will have a stronger association between self and affect or others and cognition than other women. We predicted that higher need for cognition (NFC; Cacioppo et al., 1984), or the enjoyment of cognitive processes, would be associated with stronger self-cognition/others-affect implicit associations. We also predicted that women with stronger self-cognition/others-affect associations would be less likely to endorse STEM stereotypes. We also expected a positive relationship between NFC and explicit self-cognition/othersaffect associations. To test these predictions, we conducted a study on Project Implicit investigating the relationship between NFC, affect-cognition associations with the self and others, and endorsement of women in STEM stereotypes (Jackson et al., 2014). We found that higher NFC scores were associated with decreased endorsement of stereotypical affect-cognition implicit associations in women, r(280) = −.14, p = .022, 95% CI [−0.25, −0.02]. There was no significant association between self-affect/others-cognition implicit associations and STEM stereotype endorsement, r(278) = −.05, p = .421, 95% CI [−0.17, 0.07]. Importantly, we found that the relationship between NFC and self-affect/otherscognition associations exists when using both an implicit and explicit measure. NFC may increase the likelihood of women making the counter-stereotypical association of themselves with cognition as opposed to affect. It is important to know who endorses these stereotypes, and future studies should continue to examine the trait NFC, affect-cognition associations, and related interest in STEM.

Open Data and Open Materials badges earned for transparent research practices.

Data and materials are available at https://osf.io/ wq47g/?view_only=dcb2a654 248447e6bc2530c0f708093f

Keywords: Stereotypes, women, STEM, attitudes, need for cognition

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L

iterature, movies, and the media often portray gender stereotypes that may negatively affect women’s success. For example, women tend to be perceived as more emotional and less cognitively apt compared to men (Bian et al., 2018; Shields, 2002). Women’s endorsement and internalization

of these gender stereotypes, such as women having inferior math abilities, has been shown to affect their self-perceptions and undermine their performance (Bonnot & Croizet, 2007). Even as women continue to make achievements that equal the merit of men’s, these stereotypes persist and continue to

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*Faculty mentor

Olshan, Vitiello, and Ratliff | Breaking Stereotypes?

be especially harmful to women pursuing STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) careers (Bian et al., 2018). Thus, although gender stereotypes can affect both men and women, we were particularly interested in women’s endorsement of gender stereotypes related to emotion and cognition.

Emotion Stereotypes Emotion stereotypes can focus on the degree of emotion felt or how strongly a person expresses an emotion, such as through facial expressions and body language (MacArthur, 2019). People tend to associate emotions, or affective states 1, more with women than with men (Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009; Belk & Snell, 1986; Simon & Nath, 2004). Although men tend to be viewed as “thinkers,” women are more often labeled as “feel­ ers” (Sorenson et al., 1995). Generally, women are rated as more likely to react with noticeable sadness to negative events compared to men (Hess et al., 2000). Women themselves are aware that these emo­ tion stereotypes exist and often endorse them. For example, when asked to make quick judgements while viewing emotional faces, women expected themselves to be more emotionally expressive and rated feminine targets as being “emotional” compared to masculine targets, which were rated as “having a bad day” (Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009; Hess et al., 2000). Thus, research has supported the idea that women are perceived as the more emo­ tional sex, and women may internalize this idea.

Although the idea that women are more emo­ tional than men is a strong gender stereotype, its accuracy has been challenged. Contrary to cultural beliefs, in general women do not report experienc­ ing emotional states more frequently than men do (Simon & Nath, 2004). For example, men and women report similar frequencies for feeling anger or sadness. Gender differences have been observed when men and women rate their overall emotional­ ity but not when making judgements about specific emotional states, such as momentary anger (Barrett et al., 1998). Thus, the idea that women are signifi­ cantly more emotional than men is likely a result of the emotion culture that dictates how emotions should be interpreted and expressed (Lois, 2001; Simon & Nath, 2004), and sex differences may not be as pervasive as suggested.

Scholars who study emotion use the terms “emotion” and “affect” differently. However, because they are closely related (Lerner et al., 2015; Loewenstein & Lerner, 2003) and because there are not separate stereotypes of women as emotional vs. affective, we use both terms to refer to the same underlying belief.

1

Cognitive Stereotypes In addition to emotion stereotypes, people often believe that there is a tradeoff between emotion and cognition. Throughout Western cultures, emotions are believed to hinder the ability to think rationally; therefore, individuals should control their emotions when making decisions (Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009; Brescoll, 2016). This belief in an affect-cognition conflict persists despite research that supports affective and cognitive processes occurring interdependently in the brain (Brescoll, 2016). Furthermore, the ability of emotions to aid in decision-making tends to be disregarded (Seo & Barrett, 2007). This perceived tradeoff between emotion and cognition could negatively affect women’s success as leaders and in STEM fields (Brescoll, 2016; Shields, 2002); thus, we are concerned with understanding how women endorse both cognition and emotion stereotypes.

Gender stereotypes concerning cognition often include the belief that women are more manipula­ tive, less decisive, and less intelligent than men (Beck & Snell, 1986). In the literature about cognitive stereotypes, the words “intellect” and “brilliance” are often used. However, we refer to these concepts as “cognition” and “cognitive ability,” due to the strong correlation between intellect and cognitive ability (Soubelet & Salthouse, 2010). Cognitive ability is defined as a general mental capacity for reasoning, problem solving, planning, abstract thinking, com­ prehending complex ideas, and learning through experience (Ispas & Borman, 2015).

Although people’s explicit, or self-reported, attitudes increasingly include women’s success­ ful cognitive endeavors, stereotypes associating cognition more with men than with women persist (Bian et al., 2018). For example, psychometric intelligence (IQ) is viewed as a masculine trait, whereas emotional intelligence (EI), or the ability to interpret and respond to other’s emotions, is per­ ceived as a more feminine attribute. Both men and women estimated paternal figures to have higher IQ and lower EI scores compared to maternal figures (Petrides et al., 2004).

The pipeline for women to go from students to experts or employees has several leaks, including the potential for gender stereotypes to discourage women from considering STEM as a college major, where cognitive abilities are stressed (Bian et al., 2017; Cheryan et al., 2011). These gender-related cognition stereotypes can be especially harmful in the form of discrimination against women in STEM majors and the workforce (e.g., Pew Research

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Center, 2018; Steele et al., 2002). Moss-Racusin and colleagues (2012) found that both male and female faculty judged female students as less competent and less worthy of being hired compared to identi­ cal male students. Thus, both men and women may treat women in STEM more negatively compared to how they treat male students or colleagues in the field, which is another reason to investigate women’s endorsement of these stereotypes.

The societal perception that men rely more on cognition compared to women may also affect how women perform in relevant areas. For instance, Maass and colleagues (2008) found that women’s performance during a chess game dropped sig­ nificantly when they knew they were competing with a man compared to when they were unaware of their opponent’s gender or believed they were competing with another women. The challenge that women face in male-dominated endeavors when stereotypes are activated is important to the cur­ rent study because we were interested in women’s endorsement of gender stereotypes specifically related to STEM, which is a male-dominated field.

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STEM Stereotypes Demand for STEM professions has rapidly increased over the last decade (Fayer et al., 2017). However, although women’s representation in STEM fields has improved recently, women are still less likely than men to enter these fields (Blickenstaff, 2005; Cheryan et al., 2011; Shin et al., 2016). Given that stereotypes are shared throughout a culture, women and men generally hold the same gender stereotype knowledge (Smeding, 2012). Among these gender stereotypes is the perception that math and science domains are more suited for men than for women (Blickenstaff, 2005; Charles, 2011). Although men and women often reject gender STEM stereotypes on self-report measures, they tend to report the stereotype implicitly (Nosek et al., 2002). Furthermore, both men and women rate occupations as more prestigious when they are thought to require more masculine and cognitive qualities, such as aggressiveness, competitiveness, and reasoning skills (Cejka & Eagly, 1999).

Despite widespread associations of men with science and math, some women may be less likely to endorse STEM stereotypes. In the current study, we expected that women who endorsed the counter-stereotypical association of the self with cognition (and others with affect) would report weaker endorsement of STEM stereotypes. In this paper, the others is defined as everyone outside of

the self. Although women encounter emotional and cognitive gender stereotypes in their environment (Smeding, 2012), those who more readily associate the self with cognition (and others with affect) may draw upon their own personal counter-stereotypical associations and reject STEM stereotypes.

Need for Cognition Cacioppo et al. (1984) defined need for cognition (NFC) as the extent to which individuals feel a desire to engage in effortful cognitive tasks.

Previous research has not directly correlated NFC with the perception of men as “thinkers” and women as “feelers,” nor explored how NFC relates to implicit, or more automatic, attitudes. However, NFC has been shown to be a useful predictor of one’s behavior and biases (Haugtvedt & Petty, 1989; Petty et al., 2009). For example, people low in NFC tend to rely on mental shortcuts (i.e., general stereotypes) when making decisions, such as deciding a defendant’s culpability (Crawford & Skowronksi, 1998). Meanwhile, people high in NFC tend to recall more stereotype-consistent informa­ tion than those low in this trait, but this additional recall is less likely to influence the overall decision (Crawford & Skowronski, 1998; Petty et al., 2009).

In some studies, it was found that NFC did not correlate with gender stereotype endorsement (Heesacker et al., 1999); however, high NFC has been shown to be associated with lower stereotype endorsement in specific contexts (Peck & Loken, 2004). For example, women high in NFC rated larger-sized models as more attractive when the instructional frame activated nontraditional beliefs (Peck & Loken, 2004). Unlike the study by Heesacker et al. (1999), which examines endorse­ ments of general gender stereotypes, the present study examined endorsements related to the self as more cognitive or affect focused. We were inter­ ested in whether women who are high in NFC may be less likely to endorse the stereotypical self-affect/ others-cognition association.

Implicit Attitudes To examine stereotypes concerning emotion and cognition, past studies have used explicit, or selfreported, attitudes. Although both explicit and implicit measures can predict behavior (Kurdi et al., 2019), we were interested in the results of an implicit measure because we wanted to study the strength of people’s automatic associations related to their score on a NFC measure. Implicit attitudes are those that may be assessed indirectly and reflect one’s immediate affective associations

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Olshan, Vitiello, and Ratliff | Breaking Stereotypes?

for an attitude object (Gawronski et al., 2006). It has been proposed that one’s past experiences affect implicit cognition in ways that may be unavailable for self-report (Greenwald & Lai, 2020). Thus, we define “implicit” as attitudes that are indirectly measured (Greenwald & Lai, 2020).

Implicit measures are useful because they pro­ vide information about the automatic associations that may become activated with a given stimulus (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Karpinski & Hilton, 2001). In contrast, explicit attitudes are judgements directly measured via self-reports (Greenwald & Banji, 1995, 2017). Although implicit measures tend to be more sensitive to affective experiences and culture, these attitudes may be independent of truth values because associations can be activated regardless of whether or not an individual believes them to be accurate evaluations (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006; Karpinski & Hilton, 2001). Nosek et al. (2002) provided an example of this phenomena, showing that many women reject the idea that math is for men (but not women) explicitly, but implicitly link math more quickly with men than with women.

Relatedly, we were interested in whether NFC is associated with these affect-cognition implicit associations. The hypotheses in the present study were informed by the finding that counter-stereo­ typical associations for women (e.g., self-cognition and others-affect) can be created if stereotypical associations (e.g., self-affect and others-cognition) conflict with self-knowledge (Smeding, 2012). For example, a woman in a STEM field may be less likely (than a woman not in STEM) to associate men with STEM because it contrasts with her own experi­ ences as a woman in the field. Indeed, Stout et al.

(2011) found that women in STEM held weaker implicit gender-math stereotypes than their male counterparts. Their findings suggested that, even when negative gender STEM stereotypes are salient, women with strong implicit STEM associations may be able to counteract the stereotypes by valuing the self. The present study examined NFC in place of STEM participation as another potential predictor of who may have more counter-stereotypical (selfcognition and others-affect) associations.

The Implicit Association Test The implicit association test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998) is one of the most well-known measures of implicit attitudes with higher reliability and effect sizes compared to other implicit measures (Greenwald & Lai, 2020; Nosek et al., 2005). The

IAT assesses the strength of association between a target concept and attribute. Participants quickly sort stimuli, such as words or pictures, into target categories, and the test measures how quickly the person sorts the stimuli (Fazio & Olson, 2003; Hofmann et al., 2005). The IAT is suited for inves­ tigating implicit associations in the present study because it has been used previously to study associa­ tions with the self and others (de Jong, 2002; Pinter & Greenwald, 2005). In these studies, the category “others” typically refers to everyone outside of the self or ingroup specified (Kurdi et al., 2019).

Further, the IAT is a flexible measure (Nosek et al., 2007); it can be used to assess stereotypical asso­ ciations such as the gender stereotype that women are associated with affect and men are associated with cognition. The present investigation added to previous literature by examining how people associate affect and cognition with the self and others. Based on the high reliability and frequent use of the IAT throughout social psychology (Nosek et al., 2007), this measure was the most appropriate for assessment in the present study.

In the current study, the IAT targets are Self and Others and the attributes are Affect and Cognition, measured with the terms “Feeling” and “Thinking.” The stimuli are words relating to the self and others (e.g., I, myself, they, them) and thinking and feeling words (e.g., reasoning, thought, emotion, sensing). In the practice blocks, participants sort stimuli into the target categories of Self and Others or into the attributes of Thinking and Feeling. Next, the target categories of self and others are paired with the affective or cognitive attributes, and participants have to sort stimuli into these pairings. For example, Self and Thinking are paired together on the left side of the screen while Others and Feeling are paired together on the right.

The IAT score is calculated by comparing par­ ticipants’ response times between the stereotypical association pairing block (Self-Affect and OthersCognition) and the counter-stereotypical association pairing block (Self-Cognition and Others-Affect). A faster response during one block indicates that this is a stronger implicit pairing in a person’s mental network of associations (Greenwald & Banaji, 2017; Greenwald & Lai, 2020; Karpinski & Hilton, 2001).

Hypotheses The present research focused on women and tested three hypotheses related to both implicit and explicit attitudes.

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Implicit We predicted (a) that higher NFC would be associ­ ated with weaker stereotypical associations between self and affect (others and cognition) and (b) women with stronger self and cognition (others and affect) associations would be less likely to endorse women in STEM stereotypes than women with weaker self and cognition (others and affect) associations.

Explicit In line with our prediction on the implicit level, we also expected (c) that there would be a positive relationship between NFC and explicit associations of self and cognition (others and affect). We did not make a specific prediction between NFC and the stereotypical explicit association of self and affect (others and cognition) because, although it is possible that women could endorse the societal stereotype of women as emotional (Barrett & Bliss-Moreau, 2009; Hess et al., 2000), it is also possible that they could endorse the counter-stereotypical association in line with their personal experiences (Smeding, 2012).

Method Participants A sample of female participants (N = 282) were recruited through Project Implicit, which is a website where people can volunteer to participate in research studies and learn about implicit biases.

Fourteen people were dropped due to IAT error and five for not fully completing the NFC Scale.

Participant ages ranged from 18–81, with a mean age of 34.9. Most participants were White (64.9%) and non-Hispanic (79.1%). The remaining par­ ticipants identified as Black (13.8%), Multiracial (7.5%), Other or Unknown (6.7%), East Asian (3.2%), South Asian (2.5%), American Indian or Alaska Native (0.4%), or Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander (0.4%). Participants were not compensated.

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Measures Need for Cognition Scale (α = .81) This scale contains 18 items with various statements about an individual’s experiences with effortful thinking and measures how much a person enjoys interacting with cognitive processes (Cacioppo et al., 1984). The scale has been shown to have acceptable internal consistency (α = .91; Sadowski & Gulgoz, 1992). Participants indicated their degree of agree­ ment or disagreement with statements such as “I only think as hard as I have to” and “I find satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours.” Responses were on a scale ranging from 1 (very strong disagreement) to 9 (very strong agreement). Higher NFC scores

indicated greater enjoyment of effortful thinking and problem solving, whereas lower scores reflected less of a liking for cognitive endeavors.

Women in STEM Stereotype Scale (α = .75) The original scale (Jackson et al., 2014) has 14 items with acceptable reliability in previous studies (α = .83) and measures a person’s beliefs about both men and women in STEM fields. For the present study, only the nine scale items specifically relevant to women in STEM were used. For example, the statement “Men are more interested in caring for their families than in advancing their careers” is about men and the amount of agreement with this statement would not inform us about the partici­ pants’ views of women. Participants indicated their degree of agreement with statements such as “I pre­ fer female professors more than male professors” and “Men are better at math than women” from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree; see Appendix for all items used). Higher scores on this scale indicated stronger stereotypical thinking, whereas lower scores indicated less stereotypical thinking.

Self-Affect/Others-Cognition IAT (split-half r = .65) The IAT in this study included five blocks of trials and measured an individual’s implicit associations with affect and cognition. The categories of the IAT were Self versus Others and the attributes were Affect and Cognition, measured with the words “Feeling” and “Thinking.” We calculated split-half correlations to assess the IAT’s internal consis­ tency with the Kurdi and colleagues’ (2019) app (https://bkurdi.shinyapps.io/reliCalc/), which was specifically developed for the IAT. This app calculates the average split-half correlation from 600 iterations for a more reliable estimate than a single correlation. The internal consistency for our IAT (r = .65) was within the typical acceptable range; the median consistency correlation for the IAT was .64 in a recent meta-analysis (Kurdi et al., 2019). For analyzing this assessment, we compared the response latencies of the gender stereotypical association (self-affect, others-cognition) block with the counter-stereotypical association block (selfcognition, others-affect), which is calculated into an IAT D score. If a participant responds faster during the stereotype inconsistent pairing block compared to the stereotype consistent one, this means that they have a stronger association of the self with cognition (others with affect) compared to the self with affect (others with cognition). In other words, a higher IAT D score means that participants made more stereotypical associations, whereas lower

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Olshan, Vitiello, and Ratliff | Breaking Stereotypes?

scores reflect less stereotypical associations. Finally, an IAT D score of 0 would indicate that a person responded similarly to the stereotypical association block and counter-stereotypical block, meaning that they view the self and others as similarly associated with affect and cognition.

Explicit Self-Affect/Others-Cognition Associations A series of four questions was created to assess how closely participants associate themselves and others with the attributes affect and cognition, explicitly.

Participants saw the following items in a randomized order: (a) “How strongly do you associate yourself with thinking or cognition?” (b) “How strongly do you associate others with thinking or cognition?” (c) “How strongly do you associate yourself with feeling or emotion?” and (d) “How strongly do you associate others with feeling or emotion?”

Participants responded with the following options: no association at all, slight association, moderate association, very strong association, or extremely strong association. The average of the explicit associations of the self with affect and others with cognition (items b and c) was calculated to represent an individuals’ explicit stereotypical association.

A Spearman-Brown correlation coefficient was calculated for internal reliability, which is the recommended procedure for 2-item scales (Eisinga et al., 2013). These two items were significantly correlated, r(279) = .34, p < .001. The average of the associations of the self with cognition and others with affect (items a and d) was calculated to repre­ sent an individual’s explicit counter-stereotypical association. These two items were significantly correlated, r(280) = .26, p < .001.

Procedure Approval from the University of Florida IRB02 was received prior to data collection. Participants were asked to complete a series of four tasks: Need for Cognition Scale (Cacioppo et al., 1984), Women in STEM Stereotype Scale (Jackson et al., 2014), explicit associations of the self and others with affect and cognition, and a Self-Affect/Others-Cognition IAT. The order of these tasks was randomized with a short survey of demographic information at the end. This survey included questions about the participants’ gender identity, age, political identity, and whether they work in a STEM field or not.

Results The data were analyzed using IBM’s SPSS Statistics program. We drew conclusions based on correla­ tions between NFC and self-affect/others-cognition

implicit associations, between these implicit asso­ ciations and STEM stereotype endorsement, and between participants’ explicit associations and NFC. We chose to use a correlational analysis because we wanted to know the relationship between these variables. In this study, we did not manipulate any of the variables.

Implicit Self-Affect/Others-Cognition Associations The women in our sample reported a slight implicit association (M = 0.24, SD = 0.37) of the self with affect (others with cognition) compared to the self with cognition (others with affect). This implicit association mean score was significantly different from a null, or no association, IAT D score, t(281) = 10.95, p < .001, d = 0.45. No hypothesis was made related to this test; rather, we included it so that readers could know whether the women in our sample overall were endorsing the stereotypical association of the self with affect (others with cognition).

Need for Cognition As predicted in Hypothesis 1, there was a sig­ nificant relationship between NFC and self-affect/ others-cognition implicit associations, such that women who scored higher in NFC were less likely to endorse the stereotypical association of the self with affect compared to cognition, r(280) = −.14, p = .022, 95% CI [−0.25, −0.02]. See Table 1 for all correlations between measures.

Women in STEM Stereotypes Contrary to what we expected in Hypothesis 2, there was no significant relationship between self-affect/ others-cognition implicit associations and women in STEM stereotype endorsement, r(278) = −.05, p = .421, 95% CI [−0.17, 0.07].

TABLE 1 Correlations Between Need for Cognition, STEM Stereotype Endorsement, and Implicit and Explicit Associations Variable

1

2

3

M

SD

1. IAT

0.24

0.37

2.Explicit self-feeling/others-thinking

3.6

0.7

.07

3. Explicit self-thinking/others-feeling

3.6

0.6

−.15*

4. STEM

2.0

0.5

−.05

−.11

−.15*

5. NFC

5.9

0.9

−.14

.10

.30**

*

4

.47*** −.16**

Note. Correlations between self-affect/others-cognition implicit associations (IAT score), explicit self-feeling/ others-thinking and self-thinking/others-feeling associations, Women in STEM Stereotype endorsement (STEM), and Need for Cognition (NFC). * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

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Explicit Self-Affect/Others-Cognition Associations As predicted, there was a significant relationship between NFC and explicit self-affect/otherscognition associations, r(278) = .30, p < .001, 95% CI [0.19, 0.40], such that those who were higher in NFC were more likely to associate the self with cognition and others with affect. There was not a significant relationship between NFC and the explicit stereotypical association of self with affect and others with cognition. See Table 2 for correla­ tions between each separate explicit association that participants reported (others-thinking; othersfeeling; self-thinking; self-feeling) and NFC. Exploratory Analysis Next, we investigated whether IAT score would still significantly predict participants’ NFC levels with age and years of education as predictors in the model. The multiple regression model explained 10.5% of the variance, F(3, 274) = 10.74, p < .001.

IAT score remained significantly related with NFC levels (B = −.291, p = .040). Education was a signifi­ cant predictor (B = .110, p = .001) whereas age was not (B = .007, p = .088).

Second, we examined whether explicit selfaffect/others-cognition associations would sig­ nificantly predict participants’ NFC levels with age and education included as predictors. The multiple regression model explained 21.3% of the variance, F(6, 268) = 12.06, p < .001. The explicit self-thinking association that participants reported was significantly related with NFC (B = .399, p < .001). The explicit self-feeling, others-thinking, and others-feeling associations were not significant, all ps > .05. Education was a significant predictor (B = .090, p = .006); age was not (B = .007, p = .077).

TABLE 2 Correlations Between Need for Cognition and Explicit Variables Variable

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342

1

2

3

M

SD

1. NFC

5.9

0.9

2.Others + thinking

3.2

0.8

.13*

3. Self + thinking

3.7

0.8

.38**

.23**

4. Others + feeling

3.5

0.8

.09

.42**

.26**

5. Self + feeling

4.0

0.8

.04

.33**

.15*

4

.41**

Note. Correlations between explicit others-thinking, self-thinking, others-feeling, and self-feeling associations and Need for Cognition (NFC). * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) ** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed)

Discussion The findings of the present study suggest that, although there may not be a significant relationship between self-affect/others-cognition associations and gender STEM stereotypes, there seems to be a subset of women who are high in NFC that associate themselves more with cognition than with affect. This is important because women are bombarded with societal messages telling them they are emotional and being able to additionally identify as cognitive may better set women up for success in such endeavors.

Our first aim was to investigate the relationship between NFC and women’s associations of self and others with affect and cognition. Overall, the sample reported a slight stereotypical implicit association of self-affect (others-cognition) compared to self-cognition (others-affect). However, higher NFC scores were associated with less stereotypical (self-affect, others-cognition) implicit associations, supporting our first hypothesis. Women who enjoy thinking and problem solving may be more likely to implicitly view themselves as “thinkers” compared to “feelers.” This finding may be explained by the ability of counter-stereotypical self-knowledge (e.g., the self as a thinker) to counteract stereotypical associations (e.g., the self as a feeler) (Smeding, 2012). Women who scored higher in NFC likely pos­ sessed stronger self-knowledge that is inconsistent with gender STEM stereotypes. These women might have been able to avoid making the stereotypical association by valuing knowledge of themselves as a “thinker.” This finding expands on previous work that has found that people higher in NFC as well as women in STEM fields were less likely to endorse stereotypes in specific contexts (Peck & Loken, 2004) and implicit gender stereotypes (Stout et al., 2011), respectively.

In addition to holding this implicit asso­ ciation, women higher in NFC also endorsed the counter-stereotypical self-cognition (others-affect) associations explicitly. There was not a significant relationship between NFC and the stereotypical self-affect (others-cognition) association. In this study’s sample, women self-reported that they associated the self with both cognition and affect because the mean scores for the self-thinking and self-feeling items from the study are at similar levels. This indicates that the women in our sample endorsed the stereotypical association of the self with affect but also reported a self and cognition association. However, as women scored higher on NFC, they more strongly endorsed the

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Olshan, Vitiello, and Ratliff | Breaking Stereotypes?

self-cognition association. NFC was not related to decreased endorsement of the stereotypical selfaffect association. In other words, women high in NFC still perceived the self as related to affect but were more likely to report higher self-cognition associations compared to women lower in NFC. Explicitly, women may be saying “I am a feeling person but I am also a thinker,” perhaps supporting the idea that affective and cognitive processes do not necessarily have to be perceived as opposing forces (Brescoll, 2016).

Notably, the relationship between NFC and the reported associations of the self and others with affect and cognition was found with both an implicit and explicit measure. Implicit, or associative pro­ cesses, operate together with explicit, prepositional processes as people form, reject, and revise asso­ ciations (Gawronski & Bodenhausen, 2006). This relationship also remained significant even when demographic variables such as age and education were entered into the model as predictors.

A second aim of the present study was to examine the relationship between women who have stronger implicit counter-stereotypical self-affect/ others-cognition associations and STEM stereotype endorsement. Given that counter-stereotypical associations may be created when stereotypical associations conflict with self-knowledge (Smeding, 2012), we expected that women who strongly associate the self with cognition (others with affect) would be less likely to endorse STEM stereotypes.

However, we found no significant correlation between these two measures. Women who had stronger implicit stereotypical associations were not significantly more likely to endorse gender STEM stereotypes. This may be explained in part by the fact that the Women in STEM Stereotype Scale has not been widely used and includes items that are not subtly worded. This is further discussed in the limitations section.

Limitations It is important to note that, because the present study ran correlational analyses, causal relationships between the variables investigated cannot be determined. Women who score higher in NFC may be less likely to endorse the stereotypical self-affect/ others-cognition association, however it is equally possible that as women score lower on the IAT, they also score higher in the NFC trait. Other variables we did not investigate may also be what drives the relationship between NFC and affect/cognition associations.

Further, this study used only one type of implicit measure with the targets of self and others.

The “others” target in the IAT could also be revised to specifically be “other women” as it is possible that the women in our sample were unsure whether to compare the self to their ingroup (i.e., other women) or to other people in general (i.e., other men and women). It is also important to note that, although the IAT has the highest reliability among implicit measures, it is still relatively low, which may be due to the nature of response latency measures.

Further, although some argue that the IAT does not reliably tell us about people’s automatic attitudes (Schimmack, 2021), others maintain that IAT scores are valid indicators of attitudes (Kurdi et al., 2021).

The present study utilized the Women in STEM Stereotype Scale to measure endorsement of stereotypes about women’s success in these fields (Jackson et al. 2014), but a different way to examine perceived STEM success could be used. For example, the belief that innate STEM abilities are necessary for success in these fields is one factor that likely deters women from participating (Copur-Gencturk et al., 2020). Therefore, participants’ beliefs that math is an inherent skill rather than something that can be improved on is a measure that could also reflect one facet of STEM stereotype endorsement.

Finally, this study achieved an appropriate sample size for correlational analyses, but most participants identified as non-Hispanic, White, and did not report sexual orientation. Women may encounter different gender stereotypes depending on their race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation (e.g., Blashill & Powlishta, 2009; Koenig & Eagly, 2014).

For example, people most often described Asian American women as intelligent, Black women as loud and opinionated, and gay women as masculine (Blashill & Powlishta, 2009; Ghavami & Peplau, 2013). Thus, women may form different associa­ tions of the self with affect and cognition depending on the gender stereotypes they encounter and their race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation.

Implications and Future Directions Although previous studies have investigated implicit associations with the self and others, this study sought to investigate how women perceive the self and others with affect and cognition. Our findings suggest that personality traits, specifically NFC, may be related to women’s implicit and explicit associations of the self with affect and cognition.

Research already suggests women high in NFC may be less likely to endorse the stereotype that women are more emotional compared to men

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(Shields, 2002). Broadly, this project also helps us better understand to what extent women internalize certain stereotypes about affect and cognition, both implicitly and explicitly.

The present study focused specifically on gender stereotypes that may relate to STEM fields because of the negative impact that perceptions, such as women being more emotional and less cog­ nitively apt than men, can have on women pursuing these fields (Bian et al., 2017). For instance, previous studies have shown that women’s knowledge that they are performing in a stereotypically masculine endeavor affected self-esteem and performance levels (Maass et al., 2008). NFC is a trait that should continue to be considered in future studies that examine in what situations these types of associa­ tions may be internalized, as well as whether they can be manipulated. It would be interesting to learn whether we can encourage the self-cognition associa­ tion and how it may relate to academic achievement and interest in STEM careers.

Future studies should attempt to manipulate the extent to which women see themselves as “thinkers” or “feelers.” This may be investigated by priming subjects to think about women as more emotional or more cognitive before completing the self-affect/others-cognition IAT. Our ability to affect participants’ IAT scores may be important to understanding when women may be more likely to make counter-stereotypical associations.

Further, early interventions that work to excite young girls about learning and reinforce a selfcognition association may reduce their likeliness to endorse the gender stereotypes found on the societal level. Although the correlations found here are relatively low, these results suggest that finding ways to support or encourage traits like NFC may increase the likelihood of women making the counter-stereotypical association of themselves with cognition as opposed to affect. Next steps should include examining a possible causal relationship.

This is desirable because ideas about STEM fields being intrinsically masculine and cognitively based could be harmful to women who view themselves as both affectively and cognitively inclined. Thus, the knowledge gained from the present study may contribute to future ways to increase women’s identification with cognition in addition to affect.

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Special thanks to Psi Chi Journal reviewers for their support.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Sarah M. Olshan, Department of Psychology, University of Florida, Email: solshan3@gmail.com

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Appendix Women in STEM Stereotype Scale (Jackson et al., 2014) This scale measures a person’s beliefs about women in STEM. Participants are asked to rate their agreement with the following statements by selecting the appropriate number: 1 (strongly disagree), 2 (disagree), 3 (neutral), 4 (agree), 5 (strongly agree). Items 12 and 14 are reverse scored.

2.

3.

5.

8.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Men are better at math than women.

Men are naturally more interested in science than women.

Men spend more time doing laboratory research than women.

There are fewer women faculty in science because they are less qualified.

Women are more interested in family than in their careers.

There are fewer women faculty in science because they are not interested in these fields.

Women and men are equally good at math.

Men publish more science research articles than women.

Compared to men, women are equally qualified to hold positions in science fields.

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https://doi.org/10.24839/2325-7342.JN26.3.347

Prejudice Toward Asian American Women: Clothing Influences Stereotypes Angelina R. Conrow and Regan A. R. Gurung* School of Psychological Sciences, Oregon State University

ABSTRACT. Clothing type can have a significant impact on the way people are perceived. In this study, we were interested in the effect of business versus casual clothing on the perception of Asian American women, given various stereotypes about them. We used a between-subjects design with a sample of college students from a university in the United States.

Participants saw 3 Asian American women (and 1 European American woman to distract from the nature of the study) in either business attire or casual outfits, and rated each woman on a series of descriptors based off various stereotypes of Asian American women. We used the Scale of Anti-Asian American Stereotypes to measure internal prejudice toward Asian Americans and the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory to measure sexism. The Scale of Anti-Asian American stereotypes was a significant covariate, F(4, 233) = 6.09, p < .001, ηp2 = .10.

Participants rated models in business attire as less stereotypically Asian, F(1, 239) = 46.56, p < .001, ηp2 = .17, less sexualized, F(1, 239) = 12.91, p < .001, ηp2 = .05, and less invisible, F(1, 239) = 42.01, p < .001, ηp2 = .15. Our results show that stereotypes can indeed be influenced by business attire. It is important to note that future research may be oriented toward changing the attitudes of those who hold harmful stereotypes, rather than the actions (i.e., clothing choices) of the subjects of prejudice.

Open Data and Open Materials badges earned for transparent research practices. Data and materials are available at https://osf.io/kr2uc

Keywords: Asian-American, women, stereotypes, prejudice

摘要. 服装类型会对人们的看法产生重大影响。在这项研究中，鉴于人们对

亚裔美国女性的各种刻板的印象，我们对商务服装与休闲服装对亚裔美国女 性看法的影响感兴趣。我们对来自美国一所大学的大学生样本使用了学科间 设计。参与者看到 3 名亚裔美国女性（和一名欧洲裔美国女性）穿着商务装 或休闲装，并根据对亚裔美国女性的各种刻板印象对每位女性进行一系列描 述。我们使用反亚裔美国人刻板印象量表来衡量对亚裔美国人的内部偏见， 并使用矛盾性别歧视量表来衡量性别歧视。反亚裔美国人刻板印象的程度是 一个重要的协变量，F(4, 233) = 6.09, p < .001, ηp2 = .10。参与者认为亚裔 模特穿着商务装不那么刻板。F(1, 239) = 46.56, p < .001, ηp2 = .17, 不那么 性感，F(1, 239) = 12.91, p < .001, ηp2 = . 05，并且不那么不可见 F(1, 239) = 42.01, p < .001, ηp2 = .15。我们的结果表明，刻板印象确实会受到商务着 装的影响。重要的是要注意，未来的研究可能会着眼于改变持有有害刻板印 象的人的态度，而不是偏见主体本身的行为（例如服装选择）。 关键词：亚裔美国人、女性、刻板印象、偏见 *Faculty mentor

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MAHIRAP UNAWAIN. Ang uri ng pananamit ay maaaring magkaroon ng isang makabuluhang epekto sa paraan ng pag-iisip ng mga tao. Sa pag-aaral na ito, interesado kami sa epekto ng pang-negosyo kumpara sa kaswal na damit sa pang-unawa ng mga kababaihang Asian American, na may iba't ibang mga stereotype tungkol sa kanila. Gumamit kami ng disenyo ng pagitan ng mga paksa na may isang sample ng mga mag-aaral sa kolehiyo mula sa isang unibersidad sa Estados Unidos. Ang mga kalahok ay nakakita ng 3 mga kababaihang Asian American (at isang babaeng European American upang makaabala mula sa likas na katangian ng pag-aaral) sa alinman sa pananamit sa pang-negosyo o kaswal na mga kasuotan, at na-rate ang bawat babae sa isang serye ng mga naglalarawan batay sa iba't ibang mga stereotype ng mga kababaihang Asian American. Ginamit namin ang Scale of Anti-Asian American Stereotypes upang masukat ang panloob na pagkiling sa mga Asianna American at ang Ambivalent Sexism Inventory upang masukat ang sexism. Ang Scale of Anti-Asian American stereotypes ay isang makabuluhang covariate, F(4, 233) = 6.09, p <.001, ηp2 = .10. Ang mga kalahok ay nag-rate ng mga modelong nakapanamit pang-negosyo bilang less stereotypically Asian, F(1, 239) = 46.56, p <.001, ηp2 = .17, less sexualized, F(1, 239) = 12.91, p <.001, ηp2 =. 05, at less invisible, F(1, 239) = 42.01, p <.001, ηp2 = .15. Ipinapakita ng aming mga resulta na ang mga stereotype ay maaaring maimpluwensyahan ng kasuotan sa negosyo. Mahalagang tandaan na ang pagsasaliksik sa hinaharap ay maaaring nakatuon sa pagbabago ng mga pag-uugali ng mga may hawak na nakakapinsalang mga stereotype, sa halip na mga pagkilos (ibig sabihin, mga pagpipilian sa pananamit) ng mga paksa ng pagtatangi.

Ang mga keyword: Asian American, kababaihan, stereotype, pagtatangi

T

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he United States has had a longstanding history of stereotyping Asian women (Chang, 2015; Prasso, 2005). Throughout this history, there have been many stereotypes associated with Asian and Asian American women including but not limited to exotic, sexualized, the servile “Geisha Girl,” the model wife, and the cute and tiny Asian girl (Mukkamala & Suyemoto, 2018; Nguyen, 2016). Although these stereotypes have their roots in the Western portrayal and ideas of Asian women from the European colonization of Asia to Hollywood in the midtwentieth century, the effects of all these stereotypes are seen even today through modern media and through prejudiced attitudes of the public (Chang, 2015). In the present study, we sought to explore ways to modify stereotypes specific to Asian American women. We specifically investigated if professional clothing could influence stereotypes of Asian American

women because clothing can have a significant impact on how one is perceived (Gurung et al., 2017; McDermott & Pettijohn II, 2011).

Asian American women find stereotypes influ­ ence their personal lives, professional careers, opportunities, academic careers, and relationships with others (Hommadova & Davydova, 2018; Nguyen, 2016). Consequently, it is important to understand these stereotypes as well as the prejudice and discrimination behind them. Because these stereotypes may include Asian American women as being invisible, powerless, submissive, and sexualized (Hommadova & Davydova, 2018; Mukkamala & Suyemoto, 2018; Prasso, 2005), we tested if portraying them in clothing incongru­ ent with these stereotypes, business attire, would influence perceptions in any way because business attire has been shown to increase perceptions of one as competent and authoritative (Kwon &

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Conrow and Gurung | Asian American Stereotypes

Johnson-Hillery, 1998). When women are dressed in business attire and follow workplace dress codes, they are also perceived are more hardworking and powerful (Gurung et al., 2017). Given previous research on how clothing can affect an impression of someone and stereotypes about them (Kahn & Davies, 2017; McDermott & Pettijohn II, 2011) along with the specific way business or more formal wear can influence an impression (Gurung et al., 2017), we sought to predict certain stereotypes by putting models in formal business wear. Although research has been done on the prevalence and impact of discrimination caused by stereotypes in general (Chakraborty & McKenzie, 2002; Fiske, 1998; Kim, 2002; Steele, 1997; Van Knippenberg et al., 1999), we were interested in seeing how they might differ within a particular context (e.g., clothing).

The Experience of Asian American Women Although the topic is still being explored, some research exists that explores stereotypes of Asian Americans in general, which include people from a wide variety of different countries. A prominent stereotype is that of the “model minority,” in which Asian Americans are seen as intelligent, successful, high-achieving, high-earning model citizens (Sue & Kitano, 1973; Suzuki, 1977). However, there is evidence that Asian Americans may internal­ ize these seemingly positive stereotypes as they anticipate discrimination, resulting in a reaction that may cause negative symptoms such as anxiety and depression (Chan & Mendoza‐Denton, 2008).

The internalization of these positive stereotypes is also related to somatic symptoms and psychological distress (Gupta et al., 2011).

However, more targeted research is needed in exploring stereotypes pertaining specifically to Asian American women because the multiple identi­ ties of race and gender create a separate experience for Asian American women. Previous research has confirmed that the intersectionality between race and gender can have a significant effect on how individuals are perceived, especially when it comes to stereotypes (Lei et al., 2020; Rattan et al., 2019).

There has been few empirical studies conducted to gauge the prevalence of these stereotypes as they are held by the public today. Further, little research has explored the effects of stereotypes on Asian American women or what can be done to diffuse them. In a sample of 20 women from East Asia at an American university, 13 reported some form of discrimination or sexual harassment based on their gender or on being Asian, clearly demonstrating

that these stereotypes have serious implications (Hommadova & Davydova, 2018).

One qualitative research study concerning Asian Americans and racial microaggressions, defined as “brief, commonplace, and daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental slights and indigni­ ties,” found a central theme focused around Asian American women (Sue et al., 2008, p. 329). With focus groups of participants identifying as Asian American, the discrimination Asian American women faced resulted in feelings of being exoti­ cized, fetishized, and sexualized (Sue et al., 2007).

One Asian American woman stated that such treatment “equates our identities to that of passive companions to white men” (Sue et al., 2007, p.

95). Asian or Asian American female faculty may also face prejudice in the university setting because they are expected to be nonconfrontational and submissive to authority, often being viewed as passive, exotic, and less credible, especially if they are a nonnative English speaker (Nguyen, 2016).

Another qualitative study looking at the experi­ ences of discrimination through stereotypes for Asian American women found three distinct themes of discrimination: racism against Asian Americans shared by Asian American women, Asian American women-specific experiences, and experiences from within the Asian American group or family (Mukkamala & Suyemoto, 2018). The notable point of interest in the results shows consistent themes of stereotypes in regard to the intersectionality between gender and race when considering the experience of Asian American women in particular.

The core themes found within the study were “exoti­ cized and fetishized,” “not a leader/way too young,” “submissive and passive,” “cute and small,” “invisible and silent,” and “service workers” (Mukkamala & Suyemoto, 2018). Clearly, the stereotypes that originated decades ago still hold power today. They reduce the identities of Asian American women to a one-dimensional stereotype, which can have adverse negative effects. Unfortunately, a great gap exists in empirical research specifically aimed at the stereotypes of Asian American women, their effects, and how to dispel them.

The Nature of Stereotypes Stereotypes are “schemas that allow for easy, fast, processing of information about people, events, or objects, based on their membership in particular groups” (Grison & Gazzaniga, 2019, p. 299) and are a common part of how people judge others.

Consequently, it is important to understand how

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Asian American Stereotypes | Conrow and Gurung

stereotypes operate when applying them to a certain group, in this case Asian American women.

Considering how stereotypes work within social structures, they are often false and demeaning, revealing the deeper prejudice of those who hold them (Adorno et al., 1950). Bordalo et al. (2016) maintained that stereotypes represent a set of generalizations that people use to more efficiently process information about others, often focused around the most distinctive differences between groups. It is generally understood that stereotypes are based around specific character traits that affect behavior, (e.g., Americans are aggressive; Westra, 2017). Given the wide range of definitions and attributes of stereotypes, it is easy to see how they can quickly become a more complicated matter.

Additionally, it is important to consider the cog­ nitive aspect of stereotypes. Stereotypes have been shown to reveal both conscious and unconscious attitudes toward another person or group (Banaji et al., 1993). Even simple characteristics such as facial features or skin color can instantaneously trigger stereotypical judgements in a person (Mason et al., 2006). Bordalo et al. (2016) confirmed that, when making predictions about a group, people put more weight on the most distinctive and stereotypically representative aspects within a group, and that context played an important part in determining people’s judgements. Once stereotypes have been activated, people rapidly make biased judgements, effectively impacting a range of cognitive processes such as physical behaviors and attention allocation (Bargh et al., 1996; Donders et al., 2008). It is clear that stereotypes are a complex cognitive process and must be taken seriously in order to negate the adverse consequences that may accompany them.

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Stereotypes and Discrimination When considering the situation of Asian American women, it is important to consider how stereotypes may be a legitimately important factor in determin­ ing their experiences. Although stereotypes at times may appear seemingly harmless, they can in fact have serious effects (Chan, 1988; Steele, 1997). Holding stereotypes can be highly indicative of a person’s underlying prejudice, which can be defined as “an unfair negative attitude toward a social group or a member of that group” (Dovidio & Gaertner 1999, p. 101).

This underlying prejudice may easily lead to discrimination, which can significantly alter how targets of stereotypes are perceived by others in general (Fiske, 1998; Van Knippenberg et al., 1999).

For example, one study showed that participants holding stereotypes judged Asian American individuals to have higher math abilities (Ryan et al., 1996). Discrimination can also have significant effects on the victim as well. For example, the idea of “stereotype threat” holds that performance (such as academic) in targeted groups may be lower simply by the primed expectation of the stereotype in the individual (e.g., equally capable women will perform lower than men on a math test; Steele, 1997).

Racial discrimination, closely based around such prejudice, is also related to physical and psychological health and may contribute to stress, depression, and anger in those targeted (Chakraborty & McKenzie, 2002; Kim, 2002). A 4-year longitudinal study in the United Kingdom demonstrated that cumulative exposure to racial discrimination can be significantly detrimental to one’s mental health (Wallace et al., 2016). As a particular psychological effect of such cultural stereotypes, Asian American women may even internalize them. It has been observed through interviews and first-hand accounts that women may unconsciously place blame for feelings of worthless­ ness or vulnerability caused by racial discrimination not on society, but on themselves (Chan, 1988).

However, little quantitative research has been done in regard to how this discrimination affects Asians or Asian American women specifically.

The Influence of Clothing on Perception When looking at factors that may influence perceptions, and consequently what stereotypes may be activated in an observer, previous research has suggested that clothing can have a significant impact on how people are perceived (Abbey et al., 1987; Kahn & Davies, 2017; Livingston & Gurung, 2019; McDermott & Pettijohn II, 2011). Even very minor changes in one’s clothing may greatly alter judgements made about that person (Howlett et al., 2013). More specifically, clothing can either enhance or mitigate racial stereotypes held by observers, as observers often have strong reactions to clothing associated with a specific group (i.e., stereotype congruent clothing; Gurung et al., 2020; Kahn & Davies, 2017). In one study, African Americans wearing stereotype incongruent formal clothing (suit coat, tie, dress shirt, dress pants) were rated significantly lower on a composite prejudice score by participants than African Americans in ste­ reotype congruent clothing (baggy shirt, bandana, gold chain, baggy pants), as the baggy clothing is

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Conrow and Gurung | Asian American Stereotypes

stereotypically associated with African Americans (Livingston & Gurung, 2019). In a university setting, students are more likely to trust a Black professor in formal wear (suit jacket and tie) as opposed to a casual T-shirt (Aruguete et al., 2017).

Studies have also shown the effects of specifi­ cally formal business attire on perceptions. Those in such formal clothing are generally viewed as more intelligent, interesting, attractive, and suc­ cessful (Bell, 1991; Harris et al., 1983). Kwon & Johnson-Hillery (1998) found that college students perceived models in formal business wear as more authoritative, competent, responsible, trustworthy, friendly, credible, and efficient. Considering the case of women specifically, Glick et al. (2005) com­ pared models wearing slacks and a business jacket with women wearing a “sexy outfit”: a tight skirt, low cut blouse, makeup, and heels. When participants believed the model worked in a high-status mana­ gerial position, they regarded the woman in the nonsexy business outfit more positively, with higher levels of competence and intelligence (Glick et al., 2005). High-status women in even slightly more provocative business clothing may be seen as less competent than women in a similar conservative business outfit (Howlett et al., 2015). In a study in Italy, women in a nonsexy, professional outfit were perceived as more competent, more likely to get better grades, and more likely to work harder on and receive a higher mark on their graduation thesis (Fasoli et al., 2018). In general, people view the professional appearance of women as more important than that of men (Kwon & JohnsonHillery, 1998).

However, little research has been conducted focusing on the effect of clothing on Asian Americans, much less Asian American women.

Given the evidence for clothing as a factor in chang­ ing perceptions, we decided to use this variable to try to first document the existence of stereotypes of Asian American women, then begin to address ways to influence them by manipulating outfits. With the effect that business wear has both in general and on women specifically, we were interested in seeing its effect when including race as a variable.

The Current Study The current study integrates the impact of cloth­ ing on perceptions and racial stereotypes of Asian American women. Because context plays a key part in judgements of others (Bordalo et al., 2016), we investigated if stereotypical judgements of Asian American women differ with their style of clothing

by showing models with formal business wear and casual wear. Additionally, although we realized that the term “Asian” or “Asian American” can encompass a wide variety of nationalities and ethnic backgrounds, we used this term in a broad sense, as determining the differences between these ethnici­ ties is beyond the scope of our study.

We controlled for possible confounding variables by including the Scale of Anti-Asian American Stereotypes (SAAS; Lin et al., 2005) to measure participants’ levels of prejudice toward Asians, as well as a question in the survey designed to measure participants’ personal experiences with and exposure to Asians. The SAAS was developed as a scale to gauge prejudiced attitudes toward Asian Americans specifically. It was constructed around the work of the stereotype content model, which theorizes that outgroups are often seen as either warm but incompetent, or cold and competent (Fiske et al., 2002). Asian Americans fall into this second category, as they are commonly perceived as cold and unsociable, but also intelligent and respected, which demonstrates the multidimen­ sional nature of prejudice toward Asian Americans (Lin et al., 2005). Therefore, it uses two subscales, a Competence score and a Sociability score, to accurately assess to what degree participants hold these stereotypes.

Findings from the SAAS have commonly been used in research expanding on the Asian American experience including topics of discrimination, prejudice, stereotypes, communication and social interaction, especially as they relate to mixed feelings toward Asian Americans (Alt et al., 2019; Kohatsu et al., 2011; Sy et al., 2017; Zhang, 2016).

Various studies have used the scale to assess negative stereotypes of Asian Americans, as well as anti-Asian American prejudice (Kohatsu et al., 2011; Zhang, 2016), and has been able to detect the presence of strong negative stereotypes in participants. For example, Kohatsu et al. (2011) found that certain racial attitudes were significant in predicting both competence and sociability subscores. Through its conception, the SAAS has been used to prove the negative effects of both positive and negative stereotypes on Asian Americans (Lin et al., 2005).

It has been validated alongside other measures such as the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory (ASI; Glick & Fiske, 1996) and the Subtle Prejudice Scale (Pettigrew & Meertens, 1995). Overall, it was found to be accurate in predicting prejudice as it manifests in social behaviors toward Asian Americans (Lin et al., 2005).

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We had two major research questions. First, we wanted to gauge to what extent and which stereotypes of Asian American women are cur­ rently held. Secondly and most importantly, we sought to investigate if these stereotypes would be influenced by displaying models in formal business attire, and if so, which of them would differ. We hypothesized that the Asian American models in the formal business wear would be rated lower on submissive (e.g., passive, obedient), invisible (e.g., shy, likely to be a team player), and sexualized (e.g., promiscuous, attractive) stereotypes of Asian American women. Given that Asians Americans in general are stereotyped as intelligent, successful, and high-achieving (Sue & Kitano, 1973; Suzuki, 1977), we hypothesized that business attire may actually increase this specific group of stereotypes because business wear can increase perceptions of being intelligent and successful (Bell, 1991; Harris et al., 1983).

Method Participants Participants (N = 252) included undergraduate stu­ dents at a midsized, western university in the United States enrolled in introductory psychology courses.

Participants’ ages ranged from 18–50 (M = 22.18, SD = 6.38). The sample was 74.31% women, 24.90% men, and 0.78% transgender or other. Participants were 38.34% first-year students, 21.74% secondyear students, 22.13% third-year students, 14.23% fourth-year students, and 3.56% students of another year. The sample was 60.87% European American, 16.21% Asian or Asian American, 9.49% Hispanic or Latino, 9.09% two or more races, 2.76% of another race, 1.19% African American, and 0.39% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. We recruited participants through the university’s research signup website. Participants received course credit for their participation and instructions told them that “this study is interested in testing personality traits in regards to presentation” and they were to “look at different people and rate their personalities based on how they present themselves.”

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Materials Visual Stimuli Our study was one of two separate studies being administered through a single online survey. We recruited four undergraduate students who were friends of the researcher, three Asian American women (two Korean, one Chinese/Filipina) and one European American woman (as an effort to

distract participants from the nature of the study).

The order in which the pictures appeared was randomized by Qualtrics survey software. College aged students agreed to serve as models for the study and were of relatively the same height with an average body structure. The lead author took full body pictures of all four models in front of a blank white background. All models stood facing forward with a neutral expression, looking into the camera with their hands relaxed at their sides. In Condition 1, all models dressed in business attire.

For example, the first Asian American model wore a striped shirt, a black blazer, grey slacks, and black heeled boots. Condition 2 included all four of the exact same models wearing casual clothing (e.g., jeans, leggings, sneakers, and T-shirts). All stimuli material and survey questions are available on https://osf.io/kr2uc.

Dependent Variables We measured stereotypes of Asian American women drawn from previous research as an indicator of prejudice. Participants answered a series of ques­ tions regarding each model. Below each model’s picture were the instructions “Please indicate the extent to which you believe this person is the fol­ lowing:” followed by a series of descriptive words.

The descriptors included words based off various stereotypes of Asian American women (Chang, 2015; Mukkamala & Suyemoto, 2018; Nguyen, 2016; Prasso, 2005) such as “submissive,” “feminine,” “promiscuous,” “obedient,” and “likely to be a team player,” as well as antonyms of the stereotypes: “authoritative,” “powerful,” and “likely to be a leader.” The descriptors also included stereotypes associated with the Asian American population in general such as “intelligent,” “studious,” and “hard working.” We included unassociated descriptors such as “fun,” “friendly,” and “funny” as distractors.

Participants rated each word on a Likert rating scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree).

We averaged scores for each descriptor across all three Asian American models, in an effort to generalize across the Asian American women. We then grouped these descriptors into four main categories of stereotypes: general Asian stereotypes (intelligent, studious, and hardworking), sexualized Asian women stereotypes (feminine, promiscuous, seductive, and attractive), submissive Asian women stereotypes (obedient, agreeable, compliant, submissive, and passive) and invisible, nonleaderlike Asian women stereotypes (likely to be a team player, powerful, authoritative, polite, shy, leader).

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Conrow and Gurung | Asian American Stereotypes

We created composite scores for each category, and the resulting scores showed acceptable reli­ ability with Cronbach’s alpha = .91 for general Asian stereotypes, .56 for sexualized stereotypes, .63 for submissive stereotypes, and .77 for invis­ ible stereotypes. We reverse scored antonyms of stereotypes (e.g., “authoritative,” “powerful”). After these descriptors, we asked participants to rate the outfits on six qualities: “professional,” “tight-fitting,” “exposed,” “modest,” “fashionable,” and “casual” as a manipulation check.

Covariates.

We used the SAAS (Lin et al., 2005) to measure participants’ attitudes toward Asian Americans.

The scale used a Likert rating scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). It included 25 statements such as “in order to get ahead of others, Asian Americans can be overly competi­ tive,” or “oftentimes, Asian Americans think they are smarter than everyone else is.” Statements such as these added up to produce a Competence subscore. Statements such as “Asian Americans do not interact with others smoothly in social situa­ tions” added up to produce a Sociability subscore.

Reliability measured by Cronbach’s alpha was .82 for the total score.

Participants also completed the Ambivalent Sexism Scale (ASI; Glick & Fiske, 1996) to mea­ sure sexism. The ASI consists of two subscales, the Hostile Sexism scale and the Benevolent Sexism scale. The Hostile Sexism scale is related to nega­ tive images of women and consists of 11 statements such as “Women are too easily offended” rated on a 4-point Likert scale of 1 (disagree strongly) to 5 (agree strongly). The Benevolent Sexism scale is related to positive images of women and consists of eleven statements such as “Every man ought to have a woman whom he adores” rated on a 5-point scale 1 (disagree strongly) to 5 (agree strongly). We averaged responses to create subscale scores.

Subscales showed moderate to high internal consistency, Cronbach’s alpha = .65 for Benevolent Sexism, .86 for Hostile Sexism, and .86 for the total ASI score. Although low, the reliability of Benevolent Sexism is within the acceptable range and may be due to contemporary perceptions of the individual questions in that subscale, which may vary from the time it was developed.

To measure participants’ personal exposure and experiences with Asians, we also included a question asking how many of the participants’ close friends were African American, American Indian

or Alaska Native, White, Asian or Pacific Islander, and Hispanic or Latino.

Procedure After being approved by the institutional review board, students picked the survey, titled “Attitudes and Perceptions of Clothing” from a list of studies available through the psychology department’s research recruitment Sona website. We used a between-subjects design and randomly assigned participants to either condition. All surveys were administered using Qualtrics software online.

Participants first read a consent form, and if agreeing, read brief instructions to answer honestly about their perceptions of the following pictures.

We randomly assigned participants to either the control condition (models in casual wear) or the experimental condition (models in business wear).

After rating the models, participants completed some basic demographic information (age, year in school, ethnicity, gender), the SAAS, a short separate study, and the question concerning the ethnicities of their friends. Participants read a debrief on the nature of the study and the variables and had the option to have their data deleted, due to the deceptive element. The survey took approxi­ mately 15 minutes to complete. All responses were anonymous, and students received class credit for participating.

Results Preliminary Analyses We first conducted preliminary tests for gender differences on our covariate measures, followed by examining relevant correlations. We did not per­ form any analysis with transgender participants or those of another gender, due to the small number of those participants. Consistent with past research, we found significant differences between men and women’s responses on the ASI. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) of the sexism subscales was significant, Hotelling’s Trace F(1, 235) = 7.28, p = .001, hp2 = .06. Men’s sexism scores on both subscales were significantly higher than women’s scores, F(1, 236) = 14.01, p < .001, hp2 = .06 (Hostile Sexism), F(1, 236) = 6.06, p = .02, hp 2 = .03 (Benevolent Sexism). Men and women did not vary on any subscales of the SAAS. Table 1 contains the mean ratings and standard deviations for each of the covariate scales and subscales.

Given the relative novelty of measuring both sexism and Asian American stereotypes, we exam­ ined the correlations between these measures and

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TABLE 1 Mean Ratings and Standard Deviations for Covariate Measurement Scales Scale

Business Attire M (SD)

Casual Attire M (SD)

Total M (SD)

SAAS Competence

3.40 (0.83)

3.40 (0.86)

3.40 (0.84)

SAAS Sociability

2.91 (0.77)

2.96 (0.77)

2.94 (0.76)

SAAS total ASI Benevolent

6.28 (1.48)

6.36 (1.41)

6.32 (1.44)

24.19 (5.33)

23.97 (5.84)

24.09 (5.57)

ASI Hostile

23.35 (7.91)

23.12 (8.45)

23.24 (8.15)

ASI total

47.60 (11.45)

47.07(12.61)

47.35 (12.00)

Note. SAAS = Scale of Anti-Asian American Stereotypes. ASI = Ambivalent Sexism Scale.

TABLE 2 Correlations Between Scale for Asian American Stereotypes, Sexism, and Number of Friends Variable

1

1. SAAS Sociability

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

–

2. SAAS Competence

.72**

3. SAAS total

.91** .95**

4. ASI Hostile Sexism

.41**

.39** .43**

5. ASI Benevolent Sexism

.24

.23

.25

.49**

–

6. ASI total

.39

.38

.41

.91

.80**

7. African Am. friends

.02

.06

.05

.07

.16* −.07

8. Am. Indian/Alaskan Native friends .00

.15

.09

.01

.04 −.02

.25** –

9. Hispanic/Latino friends

.07

.06

.07

.05

.06

.07

.20** .07

10. Asian/PIslander friends

.03

.25** .16*

.12

.17**

.16* .16* .02 .18**

11. White friends

.02

.02

.05

.16

.06

** **

–

** **

*

– ** **

.01

–

**

*

– –

.30

**

–

.13 .22

**

– .24**

Note. AM. = American. SAAS = Scale for Asian American Stereotypes. ASI = Ambivalent Sexism Inventory.

PIslander = Pacific Islander. * p < .05. **p < .01.

TABLE 3 Mean Ratings of Models in Each Condition

by Stereotype Group Stereotype Category

Business Attire M (SD)

Casual Attire M (SD)

General Asian***

1.78 (0.51)

2.25 (0.61)

Sexualized

2.96 (0.50)

3.13 (0.42)

Submissive

2.70 (0.53)

2.64 (0.42)

Invisible

2.34 (0.46)

2.73 (0.49)

***

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***

Note. Higher scores indicate a more stereotypical rating for each category (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). *** p < .001.

also explored if stereotypes would vary with the number of friends of color a participant had. Table 2 illustrates the main correlations. Both forms of prejudicial perceptions, sexism and stereotyping, showed significant correlations. Individuals higher in sexism also tended to have higher stereotyping scores. Of note, having more Asian American friends was associated with significantly higher levels of two forms of stereotyping, both overall and competence related stereotyping.

Although we did not run pilot tests of the images confirming perceptions of the outfits as “casual” or “business,” our manipulation check showed that, overall, participants viewed the busi­ ness outfits as more professional, F(1, 251) = 791.42, p < .001, ηp2 = .76, more modest, F(1, 251) = 11.20, p = .001, ηp2 = .04, less exposed, F(1, 251) = 7.93, p = .005, ηp2 = .03, and more fashionable, F(1, 251) = 39.11, p < .001, ηp2 = .14.

Hypothesis-Driven Analyses We tested our hypothesis that Asian American women would be seen as less submissive, invisible, and sexualized in stereotype incongruent business wear using a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). We used clothing type as the fixed factor and mean ratings from each stereotype category (general Asian, sexualized Asian women, submissive Asian women, invisible/nonleader Asian women) as dependent variables. We controlled for gender, sexism, and Asian American stereotypes using the total scores for each scale.

We found a statistically significant multivariate effect, Hotelling’s Trace F(4, 233) = 18.48, p < .001, 2 2 ηp = .24. Both gender, F(4, 233) = 3.42, p = .01, ηp = .06, and Asian stereotypes, F(4, 233) = 6.09, p < .001, 2 ηp = .10 were significant covariates. Sexism was not a significant variable.

Tests of between subjects effects showed that three out of four types of stereotypes significantly varied across conditions. Models in casual attire were rated higher on general Asian stereotypes, F(1, 239) = 46.56, p < .001, ηp2 = .17. We also found a significant effect on sexualized stereotypes, F(1, 239) = 12.91, p < .001, ηp2 = .05, with higher mean ratings of models in casual attire. Finally, there was a significant main effect for the invisible stereotype category, F(1, 239) = 42.01, p < .001, ηp2 = .15, with lower mean ratings in the business attire condition.

There was not a significance difference between conditions in the submissive category of stereotypes.

Means and standard deviations for both conditions are shown in Table 3.

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Conrow and Gurung | Asian American Stereotypes

Exploratory Analyses Although we used the White model images as a distractor, having a comparison race in the design afforded us the opportunity to conduct a post hoc test of race. We conducted four 2 (Race: Asian American, European American) x 2 (Clothing: business, casual) repeated measures analyses of variance controlling for gender, sexism, and Asian American stereotypes using the total scores for each scale.

We found a statistically significant interaction for race and clothing for sexualized stereotypes, 2 Hotelling’s Trace F(1, 235) = 5.70, p = .02, ηp = .02, for generalized stereotypes, Hotelling’s Trace 2 F(1, 235) = 8.04, p = .005, ηp = .03, and for invisible stereotypes, Hotelling’s Trace F(1, 235) = 19.05, p < 2 .001, ηp = .08. Examination of means show that participants stereotyped the Asian American women less when casually dressed. This indicates that race and clothing operate together in predicting perceptions of sexualized, general, and invisible stereotypes. None of the covariates were significant in any equation, and there no were significant effects on submissive stereotypes.

We also ran the major analysis using only the Asian and Asian American sample of participants, although only 16.21% of the sample was Asian or Asian American (32 participants). There was a significant main effect of condition, Hotelling’s 2 Trace F(1, 36) = 4.24, p = .008, ηp = .38, with only general stereotypes showing a significant difference across categories parallel2 to the main analyses, F(1, 36) = 7.29, p = .011, ηp = .19.

Discussion Racial discrimination propagated by stereotypes is indeed an issue for Asian American women, and it is important to explore these issues as well as possible solutions for them. Our results are in line with past research that suggests clothing can have a significant impact on how one is perceived (Gurung et al., 2020; Kahn & Davies, 2017). However, in adding the dimensions of race and gender, our study demonstrated how clothing can have a con­ siderable effect on the way Asian American women specifically are perceived and can in fact be used as a means to influence these stereotypes.

In general, participants viewed models in the business attire as less stereotypically Asian American than those in the casual wear. Perhaps the business clothing influenced subjects to view the models as more autonomous, powerful individuals whose race was not as important. In casual clothing,

the models’ race might have been more evident because there was less attention on the outfit.

Results from the invisible and sexualized stereotype category were in line with our original hypothesis that Asian American women in business wear would be seen as less invisible and more leader-like, as well as less sexualized. It is possible that participants associated business clothing with authority and power, which negated the invisible stereotypes of Asian American women (Gurung et al., 2017).

Additionally, our manipulation check confirmed that the business attire was perceived as more mod­ est and less exposed, which likely influenced the lower sexualized ratings. This was indeed a novel finding, as these are prominent stereotypes of Asian American women that can negatively impact their everyday lives (Mukkamala & Suyemoto, 2018; Sue et al., 2007). It is also important to note that, even though mean ratings varied between conditions for each stereotype, in the general Asian, submissive, and invisible stereotypes, mean ratings for both conditions remained below 3, indicating overall disagreement with the stereotype. Only in the sexualized category of stereotypes did the mean ratings differ between business attire (lower than 3, indicating disagreement) and casual attire (higher than 3, indicating agreement).

Contrary to our hypothesis, we did not find a significant effect for submissive stereotypes. It is possible these submissive stereotypes were not as prevalent as initially thought, or simply were not prevalent within our sample. It is also possible that our manipulation did not manage to shift this particular aspect of stereotyping as conversely because they were too strong to be shifted. It is of theoretical interest that we managed to shift some stereotypes and not others, and future research can aim to pull apart the processes and mechanisms for this finding.

It is indeed interesting to note that having more Asian American friends was associated with both overall and competence-related types of stereotyping. It was possible that some type of confirmation bias was involved, in which people paid more attention to stereotypically Asian traits in their Asian American friends, ignoring traits that might be incongruent with such stereotypes.

If people had more Asian American friends, they might automatically be more used to searching for more stereotypically Asian traits in each of those friends. Additionally, the strong influence of such stereotypes might have caused these labels to become internalized, a common occurrence in

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Asian Americans (Chan & Mendoza-Denton, 2008; Pyke & Dang, 2003). Therefore, Asian Americans may behave closer in accordance with such ste­ reotypes, even unconsciously, as a result of this internalization (Chan, 1988; Pyke & Dang, 2003; Shen, 2015). People observing these behaviors such as those with more Asian American friends are then more likely to have stronger stereotypical views of Asian Americans.

Additionally, the interaction effects found in the study indicate that race and clothing worked together in shaping perceptions of individuals. What may create a certain perception for one race may create a different perception for another. The fact that these interactions were significant in predicting sexualized stereotypes, general Asian stereotypes, and invisible stereotypes may indicate something about the nature of these such labels and how dif­ ferent races are measured by similar traits. Given we only had one White model, these exploratory analyses should be interpreted with caution.

Our design represents a first step into using a relatively simple variable, clothing, to predict perceptions. The sizable research literature on the linkage of clothing to sexism, and newer research showing how formal clothing may attenuate racist perceptions (Gurung et al., 2020) was matched here where professional clothing short circuits commonly held beliefs about Asian American women. This was a first step in examining the power of clothing in this respect, and the current design sets up some key next steps.

The major limitations of our study included the demographics of our models and the overall makeup of our sample. Our sample was comprised of college students at one specific West Coast college, with the greatest number of participants being young, European American women, limit­ ing generalizability. Although the West Coast has a higher number of Asian American individuals making the face validity of the study higher, the use of primarily Asian American models limited our generalizability. Additionally, we only used female models in the study, so our results cannot be generalized to Asian American males or people of other non-Asian races. Although we included one European American model to alleviate suspicion, it is possible participants might have been alerted to the focus on Asian Americans in the study due to the higher number of Asian American models.

Finally, the simple “look” of each model might have lent itself toward a certain perception (e.g., a younger looking model vs. an older looking model),

and additional work with models varying in age would be prudent.

There are many ways future research may explore this study and its results further. First, steps could be taken to gather a more diverse sample size to expand the generalizability of the results.

It may be worth considering using male models, to explore stereotypes of Asian American men or Asian Americans in general. Although this study focused on Asian Americans in their own right, future research could compare results against other races to explore whether certain clothing does have a different impact on Asian Americans versus other races, both those of color and those that are not. Additionally, given that this study used a between-subjects design, future studies may utilize a within-subjects design to verify that the effects continue to exist within the same participants.

Perhaps the most important conclusion to note is that further research should look into ways to change the mindset of those who hold stereotypes that may negatively influence the lives of the subjects in any way, whether they be obvi­ ously unfavorable or seemingly positive, such as that of the “model minority.” Our results suggest that using certain factors to influence stereotypes is indeed possible, which is a vital first step. However, relying on the victims of discrimination to alter their actions and appearance to avoid prejudice would certainly be an undesirable precedent, as Livingston and Gurung (2019) noted in their study of a similar nature. Instead, it is essential to reconsider how people think about the ways they deal with stereotypes and prejudice. Future research may be directed at exploring different ways to stop discrimination at its source such as rewiring how people think about others as well as increasing people’s awareness of internal biases.

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https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2015.1089854 Author Note. Angelina R. Conrow https://orcid.org/00000002-2354-3505 Regan A. R. Gurung https://orcid.org/0000-0002-35424378 Materials and data for this study can be accessed at https://osf.io/kr2uc. We have no known conflict of interest to disclose.

Correspondence for this article should be addressed to Angelina Conrow, Oregon State University, 22500 SW Fairoaks Ct., Sherwood, OR 97140.

Email: conrowa@oregonstate.edu. Phone: 971-295-7677.

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