A test of the rejection identification model among gay men in Turkey

ABSTRACT

Despite the improvements in the rights of LGBTIQ+ groups, gay men continue to confront prejudice and discrimination in various areas of life, whose effects harm their well-being. Turkey is one of the countries where prejudice and discrimination are high and pervasive. This study tests the possible mediating role of ingroup identification (i.e. satisfaction, solidarity, salience, importance, individual self-stereotyping, ingroup homogeneity), as proposed by the rejection-identification model (RIM), in the negative relationship between perceived discrimination and well-being in a sample of 496 Turkish gay men. Results indicated that identity salience mediated the links from perceived personal discrimination to negative affect and psychological well-being, but the mediating effects were contrary to predictions of the RIM. As for the direct effects, perceived personal discrimination predicted all four outcomes of well-being (i.e. psychological well-being, positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction), whereas perceived group discrimination only predicted negative affect. The results mark the context-dependent nature of the model and are discussed considering the literature regarding the RIM and minority stress theory.

KEYWORDS:

• Rejection-identification model
• perceived discrimination
• ingroup identification
• well-being
• gay men

Acknowledgments

We thank Fikret Batuhan Korkmaz for his support during the data collection process.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data supporting this study’s findings are available on request from the corresponding author, GS. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants. https://osf.io/ymaqj/?view_only=03fb547b771746c28da9feb1ef9f221c.

Open scholarship

This article has earned the Center for Open Science badge for Open Materials. The materials are openly accessible at https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2023.2295945.

Geolocation information

The study has been conducted in Turkey.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/19419899.2023.2295945.

Additional information

Funding

The study has been conducted without any funding.