Sexual Minority Identities: Outness and Well-Being Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Adults

Abstract

Research suggests that lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals with highly developed positive identities tend to score higher on measures of outness and well-being than those with less positively developed LGB identities. These relationships appear to be nonlinear and a number of mediators have been proposed. To complement extant research, the present investigation posed four hypotheses: (1) negative identity would predict outness; (2) negative identity would predict well-being; (3) negative identity would mediate the relationship between outness and well-being; and (4) individuals who self-identify with intersectional identities will score lower on well-being than those who identify only as LGB.

KEYWORDS:

• identity
• sexual identity
• mental health