https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6945-5562
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ABSTRACT
In three experiments, we tested whether LGBTQ+ individuals experience greater psychological well-being when they feel other groups support (versus restrict) their community’s collective autonomy to express its social identity. LGBTQ+ individuals recruited from a Canadian city (Experiment 1a, N=114), and nationally from the United States (Experiment 1b, N=370), retrospectively recalled feeling more personal autonomous need satisfaction, and in turn, greater psychological well-being during a time in their community’s history when they felt their collective autonomy was supported (versus restricted). In Experiment 2 (N=396), US participants reported greater personal autonomous need satisfaction and psychological well-being after reflecting on how their community presently had versus lacked collective autonomy. Effects remained robust controlling for anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination, personal autonomy support, and openness about one’s gender/sexuality identity.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Supplementary Material
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.
Notes
1. Our results were largely consistent when examining the effects of condition only amongst individuals who identified as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Queer, versus individuals who identified as, Trans or Genderqueer (See Supplemental Table 1a and 1b). Our results were also robust when controlling for whether individuals were LGBQ versus, Trans or Genderqueer, and the condition by community-sub-membership interaction (See Supplemental a and b).
2. The percentage of participants who viewed the writing task but did not pass the inclusion criteria did not differ significantly between the collective autonomy restriction condition (25.7%; 19/74 of participants) and the collective autonomy support condition (23.4%; 18/77 participants), x2 = 0.07, p =.80. Our findings remain consistent when including all participants (see open data and syntax). Our results also remained consistent when using more stringent exclusion criteria such that we excluded people who: wrote that they could not think of, or articulate a response; wrote about the opposite type of experience as what was asked (i.e., they gave an example of collective autonomy support if in the restriction condition, or an example of restriction in support) or wrote about topics that were related to their community but not collective autonomy restriction (See Supplemental Table 3).
3. The patterns of significance for the effects of experimental condition on collective autonomy restriction, personal autonomous need satisfaction, and psychological well-being was consistent for individuals who did and did not indicate that they identified with the superordinate LGBTQ+ community identity as a whole. See Supplemental Table 4.
4. We also measured the extent to which participants perceived personal autonomy support from other members of their LGBTQ+ community (see supplemental materials). As expected, there was not a between condition difference in recollections of receiving personal autonomy support from other community members, F(1,114) =.37, p =.56, n2 =.003, and the effects of condition on personal autonomy and psychological well-being remained consistent controlling for this factor.
5. We tested a reverse pathway in which writing task condition impacted personal autonomy through changes in psychological well-being. We found that the indirect effect of condition on personal autonomy through well-being is non-significant: Indirect effect =.03, 95%CI[−.13,.21]. The direct effect of condition on personal autonomy was significant in the model, b =.82, 95%C1[.39, 1.25], p <.01.
6. We over sampled because we expected some participants might fail our attention checks (see pre-registration).
7. The percentage of participants who viewed the writing task but did not pass the inclusion criteria did not differ significantly between the collective autonomy restriction condition (36%; 63/175 of participants) and the collective autonomy support condition (36%; 71/195 participants), x2 = 0.001, p =.93. Our findings remain consistent when including all participants (see open data and syntax). Consistent with Experiment 1a, we also report results using stricter exclusion criteria based on participants written responses. The pattern of significance for all outcomes was identical (see Supplemental Table 3).
8. The effect of condition on all outcomes was significant for individuals who did and did not identify on the basis of the superordinate LGBTQ+ identity (See Supplemental Table 4).
9. We note that while the item strings assessing group identification were identical in both Experiments (i.e., they were phrased with respect to the LGBTQ+ community), there were slight differences to the instructions proceeding the item strings. In Experiment 1a, participants were asked to fill the questions with respect to their own specific way of identifying with their LGBTQ+ community (e.g., to the, Trans part of the community), while in Experiment 1b participants were asked in the instructions to report their membership to their LGBTQ+ community as a whole.
10. We tested a reverse pathway in which writing task condition impacted personal autonomous need satisfaction through changes in psychological well-being. We found that the indirect effect of condition on personal autonomous need satisfaction through well-being is significant: Indirect Effect =.93[.73, 1.14]. The direct effect of condition on personal autonomous need satisfaction was non-significant in the model, direct effect = −.04, t(370) = −.37, p =.71.
11. Supplemental Table 6 reports the interaction effects for Experiment 1a and Experiment 1b analyzed separately. However, we caution that Experiment 1a when analyzed alone was likely underpowered to test the group identification by condition interaction.
12. Within this model we allowed ingroup affect to moderate the relation between condition and personal autonomous need satisfaction, but not personal autonomous need satisfaction and psychological well-being because we had no theoretical reason to expect moderation of this relation.
13. Our protocol for exclusion was pre-registered. The percentage of participants who viewed the writing task but did not pass the inclusion criteria did not differ significantly between the collective autonomy restriction condition (9.38%; 20/213 of participants) and the collective autonomy support condition (5.14%; 11/214 participants), x2 = 2.86, p =.090. Our findings remain consistent when including all participants (see open data and syntax). Consistent with Experiment 1, we also report results using stricter exclusion criteria based on participants written responses. The pattern of significance for all outcomes was identical (see Supplemental Table 3).
14. The effect of condition on all outcomes was significant for individuals who did and did not identify on the basis of the superordinate LGBTQ+ identity (See Supplemental Table 4).
15. We tested a reverse pathway in which writing task condition impacted personal autonomous need satisfaction through changes in psychological well-being. We found that the indirect effect of condition on personal autonomous need satisfaction through well-being is significant: Indirect Effect =.57[.41,.74]. The direct effect of condition on personal autonomous need satisfaction was significant in the model, direct effect =.25, se =.10, p =.011, 95% CI[.06,.45].