Comparing Pansexual- and Bisexual-Identified Participants on Demographics, Psychological Well-Being, and Political Ideology in a New Zealand National Sample

Abstract

Pansexuality, characterized by attraction to people regardless of their gender, is an emerging sexual identity. Research has started to explore the differences between those who identify as pansexual and those who identify as bisexual, typically defined as being attracted to both men and women. This article extends past research by testing for differences between those who identify as pansexual (n = 52) and bisexual (n = 497) in a nationally representative sample. We used the New Zealand Attitudes and Values Study (NZAVS) to test for differences in demographic variables, psychological well-being, and political ideology. We found that pansexual participants were younger, more likely to be gender diverse (transgender or nonbinary), and more likely to be from the indigenous Māori ethnic group than bisexual participants. Pansexual participants also reported higher psychological distress and were more politically liberal than bisexual participants. These results suggest that people who identify as pansexual are, on average, quantifiably different from those who identify as bisexual; this study adds to a new but growing body of research on emerging plurisexual identities.

Funding and Acknowledgments

Data collection for the NZAVS was supported by a grant from the Templeton Religion Trust (TRT096). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. As per the NZAVS data access statement, a copy of the anonymous data reported in each NZAVS publication is available from CS upon request from appropriately qualified researchers. Such data will be provided with the explicit understanding that they are used solely for the purposes of replicating or otherwise checking the validity of analyses reported in scientific papers analyzing NZAVS data.

Notes

¹ In addition, although we believe that bicurious people represent a different group (i.e., they may be closer to heterosexuals conceptually; however, more research is needed, especially across generations; e.g., Savin-Williams, 2018), the interested reader can note that we conducted an ancillary analysis. The results showed that the bicurious group was similar to both the pansexual and bisexual groups, with the exception that they were more politically conservative than pansexuals.

² A reviewer noted that the effect for psychological distress may have been driven by the greater gender diversity of the pansexual group (11.5%). We ran the model without gender-diverse participants and found the same results.