The association between prejudice toward and essentialist beliefs about transgender people.

Kristina R. Olson,Eric M. Gomez,Jessica J. Glazier

doi:10.1525/collabra.25528

Kristina R. Olson, Eric M. Gomez + Show 1 more

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https://doi.org/10.1525/collabra.25528

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Abstract

Previous research often suggests that people who endorse more essentialist beliefs about social groups are also likely to show increased prejudice towards members of these social groups, and there is even some evidence to suggest that essentialism may lead to prejudice and stereotyping. However, there are several notable exceptions to this pattern in that, for certain social groups (e.g., gay men and lesbians), higher essentialism is actually related to lower prejudice. The current studies further explored the relationship between essentialism and prejudice by examining a novel type of essentialism-transgender essentialism (i.e., essentializing transgender identity), and its relationship to prejudice towards transgender people. Study 1 (N = 248) tested the viability of transgender essentialism as a construct and examined the association between transgender essentialism and transprejudice, while Studies 2a (N = 315), 2b (N = 343), 3a (N = 310), and 3b (N = 204) tested two casual pathways to explain this relationship. The results consistently showed that the more that people endorse transgender essentialist beliefs, the warmer their feelings towards trans people (relative to cis people) were, echoing past research showing a similar relationship between essentialism and prejudice towards sexual minorities. However, the manipulations of both essentialism (Studies 2a and 2b) and prejudice (Studies 3a and 3b) were largely unsuccessful at changing the desired construct, meaning we were unable to provide direct causal tests. The one exception was a successful manipulation of the universality of trans experiences, but even here this resulted in no change in prejudice. The primary contribution of this work is in robustly demonstrating that greater transgender essentialism is associated with transprejudice.

Highlights

Previous research often suggests that people who endorse more essentialist beliefs about social groups are likely to show increased prejudice towards members of these social groups, and there is even some evidence to suggest that essentialism may lead to prejudice and stereotyping
We found that both greater biological essentialism and universality were linked with less prejudice towards transgender people, echoing research showing similar associations in
We found that the mean correlations between biological essentialism and feelings towards transgender people relative to cisgender people (M r = -.40, p < .001, 95% CI [-.44, -.35]) and universality and feelings towards transgender people relative to cisgender people (M r = -.41, p < .001, 95% CI [-.45, -.36]) were both of medium size and again showed that greater essentialism was associated with less prejudice, overall suggesting a moderate relation between transgender essentialism and transprejudice

Summary

Introduction

Previous research often suggests that people who endorse more essentialist beliefs about social groups are likely to show increased prejudice towards members of these social groups, and there is even some evidence to suggest that essentialism may lead to prejudice and stereotyping. For decades researchers have been studying the relationship between essentialism and negative outcomes, like prejudice and stereotyping, for a range of social groups These studies have often reported that the more people endorse essentialist beliefs the more likely they are to hold prejudice towards people in those groups (e.g., Jayaratne et al, 2006; Keller, 2005). For some social groups higher essentialism is associated with lower prejudice (e.g., Haider-Markel & Joslyn, 2008; Jayaratne et al, 2006; Rüsch et al, 2010). The overwhelming bulk of research in the domain of sexual orientation suggests that greater endorsement of essentialist beliefs about homosexuality is associated with less prejudice towards sexual minorities (Haslam et al, 2002; Hegarty, 2002; Hegarty & Pratto, 2001; Herek & Capitanio, 1995; Whitley, 1990)

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