Dispositional Mindfulness in Heterosexual and Lesbian/Bisexual Women: Associations with Sexual Prejudice and Internalized Sexual Stigma

ABSTRACT

This research investigated the effect of dispositional mindfulness on the reduction of sexual prejudice and internalized sexual stigma in heterosexual and lesbian/bisexual women, who still represent a population that is under-represented in the scientific literature. Participants were 203 Italian women, both heterosexual (N = 104, 51.2%) and lesbian/bisexual (N= 99, 48.8%), ranging between 18 and 68 years old. They responded to a questionnaire containing demographic information and measures of dispositional mindfulness, need for cognitive closure, and adherence to traditional gender roles. Dominance analyses were run to test the predictive power of mindfulness’ dimensions on internalized sexual stigma and on sexual prejudice over and above the other predictors. Results showed that having a mindful nonjudging attitude toward one’s inner experience is associated with less internalized sexual stigma in lesbian and bisexual women. On the contrary, dispositional mindfulness was not associated with heterosexual women’s sexual prejudice against gay and lesbian individuals.

KEYWORDS:

• Dispositional mindfulness
• sexual prejudice
• heterosexual women
• lesbian/bisexual women
• internalized sexual stigma
• nonjudging of inner experience
• dominance analysis

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. This article does not refer to any studies with animals performed by any of the authors. The research received approval by the Ethical Committee of the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology, SapienzaUniversity of Rome, Italy.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.