Gender Transgressed: Felt Pressure, Gender Typicality, and Mental Health in Transgender vs. Cisgender Adults
Abstract
Gender stereotypes are pervasive parts of our culture, and they can change the way
we feel about ourselves. Previous studies in cisgender children suggest that boys
and girls experience different levels of (1) felt pressure to conform to gender stereotypes
and (2) gender typicality, or self-perceived similarity to gender groups. Studies
also find that high felt pressure to conform to gender stereotypes is associated with
worse mental health outcomes. However, there is limited research on how transgender
individuals experience felt pressure and gender typicality, and whether these experiences
are associated with worse mental health. My study aims to fill this gap by comparing
felt pressure and gender typicality in cisgender vs. transgender adults and by investigating
how felt pressure correlates with mental health, as measured by self-esteem and psychological
distress. Analyses found that, regarding feminine stereotypes, cisgender men felt
pressure to avoid behaving in accordance with feminine stereotypes, while cisgender
women, transgender men, transgender women, and nonbinary people felt pressure to conform
to them. Regarding masculine stereotypes, cis women felt the least pressure to conform
to or avoid masculine stereotypes, while all other groups felt pressure to conform
to them. Cis men had significantly higher same-gender typicality than cis women and
nonbinary people. Trans women and trans men had significantly higher other-gender
typicality than cis men and cis women. The negative correlation between feminine felt
pressure and self-esteem was moderated by gender. The negative correlation between
masculine felt pressure and self-esteem was not moderated by gender. The positive
correlation between feminine felt pressure and psychological distress was moderated
by gender. The present study finds that transgender men and transgender women do not
always experience gender stereotypes similarly to their cisgender counterparts, so
previous findings in cisgender people cannot consistently be applied to transgender
people. Nonbinary people did not significantly differ from binary groups as a whole
in this study, suggesting that more research needs to be conducted on nonbinary experiences
of gender stereotypes. The present study also finds that gender moderates the relationship
between feminine felt pressure and both indexes of mental health, suggesting implications
for identity-specific mental health interventions.
Type
Honors thesisDepartment
Psychology and NeuroscienceSubject
gender identitytransgender
gender stereotypes
mental health
Minority Stress Model
Social Cognitive Theory
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/27113Citation
Sundar, Kiran (2023). Gender Transgressed: Felt Pressure, Gender Typicality, and Mental Health in Transgender
vs. Cisgender Adults. Honors thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/27113.Collections
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