Affectionate Communication Mediates the Effects of Minority Stress on Mental Wellness for LGBTQIA+ Adults

ABSTRACT

As a prosocial behavior, affectionate communication evidences a stress-buffering effect, ameliorating the deleterious effects of stressors on stress. Although much previous research has documented such an effect on physiological stress reactivity, the present study examines the ability of trait-level affectionate communication to mediate the effect of minority stress on mental wellness for LGBTQIA+ adults. Using a sample of U.S. American LGBTQIA+ adults (N = 494), this project demonstrates that psychological stress and depressive symptoms are negatively associated with trait affectionate communication and that trait affectionate communication partially mediates the effect of minority stress on these outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• Affection exchange theory
• affectionate communication
• depression
• LGBTQIA+ health
• minority stress
• stress

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. These percentages sum to > 100 because participants could select multiple racial identities.

2. A post-hoc power analysis confirmed that the effective sample size of 494 still provided in excess of 95% power to identify the same effect size under the same parameters.

3. Remaining items were “Many families would be disappointed to have an LGBTQIA+ child,” “Many people do not accept same-sex couples,” and “Many people believe that LGBTQIA+ romantic partners should not hug, hold hands, or kiss in public”

4. Remaining items were “If someone offered me the chance to be completely heterosexual/straight, I would accept it,” “I feel that being LGBTQIA+ is a personal shortcoming for me,” and “I would like to get professional help to change my sexual orientation to heterosexual/straight”

5. In the current study, 11.1% of participants identified as Black, whereas 17.08% of Goldberg et al.’s participants and 15.3% of Crissman et al.’s participants similarly identified. In the current study, 14% of participants identified as Latino/a, whereas 22.23% of Goldberg et al.’s participants similarly identified.