Maladaptive personality traits, defense mechanisms, and trans-negative attitudes

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Although there is growing interest in trans-negative attitudes and behaviors, few studies have investigated the psychological variables associated with them. The present study aims to assess the relationship between psychopathological symptoms, defensive style, personality traits and negative attitudes toward transgender people.

Methods: Participants (N = 165) were asked to complete several questionnaires assessing their psychopathological symptoms (SCL-90-R), defensive style (REM-71), maladaptive personality traits (PID-5-BF), antitransgender attitudes (ATTI), and sociodemographic characteristics. A four-step hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis was carried out to investigate the predictive role of such variables on antitransgender attitudes.

Results: We found a significant negative effect of mature defenses and a positive effect of antagonistic traits on trans-negative attitudes. Political and religious beliefs predicted trans-negative attitudes, whereas no effect was found for the other predictors. We also found a significant effect of age and an interaction effect between sexual orientation and gender, with heterosexual men showing higher levels of trans-negativity than non-heterosexual men.

Conclusions: The study highlights the importance of both personality and social constructs in predisposing to negative attitudes toward transgender people. Future research should therefore take into account both personality and social variables.

KEYWORDS:

• Transgender
• transphobia
• trans-negative attitudes
• personality traits
• defense mechanism
• prejudice

Acknowledgments

Authors are grateful to Gerardo Elmini, M.S., for support in data collection.

Declaration of conflict of interest

The authors have no conflict of interest to declare.

Notes

^a Acting out, splitting, displacement, dissociation, fantasy, omnipotence, passive aggression, projection, repression, undoing, conversion, somatization, withdrawal, and suppression.

^b Denial, humor, intellectualization, reaction formation, idealization, altruism, and sublimation.