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Born this Way–or Not? The Relationship Between Essentialism and Sexual Minorities’ LGBTQ+ Identification and Belonging

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Abstract

Bisexual people experience lower levels of belonging in the LGBTQ+ community than gay and lesbian people. We investigated one of the factors that may reduce bisexual individuals’ feelings of belonging in and identification with the LGBTQ+ community: Sexual orientation essentialism. Across two online studies with participants recruited through Prolific, we tested whether bisexual people endorsed sexual orientation essentialism less than lesbian and gay individuals and, in turn, feel lower levels of identification and belonging with the LGBTQ+ community. Essentialism separated into three dimensions in Study 1 (N = 375): Entitativity, naturalness, and discreteness. Relative to lesbian and gay individuals, bisexual individuals viewed sexual orientation as less natural, in turn reporting lower levels of belonging and identification. They also viewed sexual orientation groups as less discrete, which instead translated to higher levels of belonging and identification. Sexual orientation groups did not differ in their endorsement of entitativity beliefs. In Study 2 (N = 390), we focused on naturalness and replicated findings from Study 1. In addition, lower naturalness beliefs were associated with the belief that one’s own views were different from those held by the LGBTQ+ community, which also contributed to lower levels of belonging and identification. Together, these studies contribute to understanding the role of essentialism in intragroup processes and paint a nuanced picture of essentialism in different sexual minority groups.

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Notes

  1. While these terms partially deviate from earlier terminology used in the essentialism literature, the dimensions share a lot of similarity. For example, “immutability” (Hegarty & Pratto, 2001) is highly similar to “naturalness.” We will use Arseneau et al.’s (2013) terminology to be consistent with findings pertaining to essentialism within the LGBTQ+ community.

  2. We use these terms to refer to sexual identity (i.e., self-categorization as bisexual, lesbian, or gay) rather than sexual behavior or attraction as this seems most appropriate in a study that focuses on social identities and group processes.

  3. Because bisexual participants (M = 29.80; SD = 8.86) were younger than lesbian and gay participants (M = 33.97; SD = 11.92), t(372) = 3.85, p < .001, we ran all analyses that examine differences between lesbian/gay and bisexual participants controlling for age. Controlling for age did not change any of the results, so we reported the analyses without age as a covariate, for consistency across studies.

  4. In addition to the measures reported here, we measured the extent to which participants believed essentialist beliefs were held by the LGBTQ+ community. We used this measure to examine perceived discrepancies in views, relevant for H2. We also measured self-stereotyping. Details about these measures as well as results pertaining to these measures can be found in the online supplement.

  5. Values in brackets refer to 95% confidence intervals.

  6. In addition, we measured the naturalness beliefs participants believed the group in the scenario held, self-stereotyping, belonging with the group they imagined, ingroup respect, and positive affect. More information about these measures and respective results can be found in the online supplement.

  7. When running this model, the indirect effect was not significant for any of the facets of essentialism in Study 1, but was significant in Study 2.

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Funding

This work was partially supported by a grant from the Economic and Social Research Council [Grant No. ES/S00274X/1] awarded to the second author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Washington Singer Laboratories, University of Exeter, Perry Road, Prince of Wales Road, Exeter, EX4 4QG, UK

    Thekla Morgenroth, Teri A. Kirby, Isabel A. Gee & Thomas A. Ovett

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  1. Thekla Morgenroth
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  2. Teri A. Kirby
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  3. Isabel A. Gee
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  4. Thomas A. Ovett
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Contributions

TM and TK conceived of the overall idea of this paper. TM, TK, and TO all contributed to the design, materials, and data analysis of Study 1. TM, TK, and IG all contributed to the design, materials, and data analysis of Study 2. All authors contributed to the introduction and discussion sections. The first draft of the manuscript was written by TM, with crucial edits from TK. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Thekla Morgenroth.

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Ethical Approval

Both studies were approved by the University of Exeter Psychology Ethics Committee and were performed in accordance with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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The first and third authors use they/them pronouns, the second author uses she/her pronouns, and the fourth author uses he/him pronouns.

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Morgenroth, T., Kirby, T.A., Gee, I.A. et al. Born this Way–or Not? The Relationship Between Essentialism and Sexual Minorities’ LGBTQ+ Identification and Belonging. Arch Sex Behav 50, 3447–3458 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-021-02145-y

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