The Psychology of Transprejudice

Abstract

In this thesis, I explored multiple predictors of transprejudice with the aim of understanding the relation between these varied psychological mechanisms and trans-related attitudes. In the first chapter of this thesis, I start with an overview of the literature on prejudice in general, and prejudice against transgender people specifically. I also provide a brief overview of the theories on gender. In the next chapter, I go on to summarise and reflect on the methodology used throughout this thesis. This is followed by four empirical chapters wherein I present 10 studies exploring the multiple predictors of transprejudice. Specifically, in Chapter 3 (3 studies, N = 146; N = 200; N = 245), I show that gender identity consciousness is an indirect predictor of transprejudice, mediated by greater gender identification and gender distinctiveness threat. In Chapter 4 (3 studies, N = 146; N = 199; N = 171), I illustrate that prior knowledge about and contact with transgender people predicts lower levels of transprejudice. In Chapter 5 (2 studies, N = 200; N = 205), I explore whether transgender essentialism moderates transprejudice depending on (1) age of trans selfidentification and (2) current age of the transgender person in question. Finally, in Chapter 6 (2 studies, N = 341; N = 391) I develop and validate a new scale to measure transprejudice. The thesis ends with a general discussion of the key findings of these 10 studies, the applied contributions that this research offers, and suggestions for future research avenues. <br/