1 - (SYM 63) Local Hypervigilance Experiences Among LGBTQ+ People: Geographic Considerations

Stigma towards LGBTQ+ people arises at multiple levels: via discriminatory legislative policy (structural level), stigmatizing local norms (community level), and interpersonal experiences of discrimination (individual level; Hatzenbuehler, 2017). Indeed, anti-LGBTQ+ policies increasingly target local community contexts (Agénor et al., 2022), and LGBTQ+ individuals endorse more rejection, bullying, and violence than peers (Gamarel et al., 2014). From these and other marginalizing factors, researchers have begun to understand where and when LGBTQ+ hypervigilance (i.e., excessive watchfulness for identity-related threats) arises (Rostosky et al., 2022). While researchers continue to connect structural policy and individual LGBTQ+ experiences, the elicitation of hypervigilance in community contexts remains understudied. The current study employs conjoint analysis, a novel survey paradigm whereby LGBTQ+ people iteratively select which of three local contexts elicits the most hypervigilance. This study assesses how regional (e.g., Census) breakdowns and demographics intersect to induce community-specific LGBTQ+ hypervigilance.

Participants were LGBTQ+ people who completed self-report surveys, including a conjoint task that measured hypervigilance biases in location, companion, time, familiarity, and distance from home. For validation, Study 1 (MTurk, n = 455) vignettes included stereotypically neutral (e.g., restaurant) and rejecting (e.g., religious institution) places, whereas Study 2 (Prolific, n = 799) only included the former. In Study 1, versus cisgender men, nonbinary participants in states with 10% more registered democrats valued location 7.6% more. Relative to lesbians, bisexual participants valued familiarity 24.5% more in states with a 1% higher female-to-male sex ratio. In Study 2, versus bisexual participants, gay participants valued distance 7.8% less in states with a 1% higher female-to-male sex ratio. 

Many LGBTQ+ people are at-risk of social isolation, and these data clarify how multi-level factors influence the local contexts that LGBTQ+ people enter versus avoid. In eliciting hypervigilance, LGBTQ+ subgroups variably considered familiarity. Other, more objective factors (e.g., time of day) evoked hypervigilance similarly by group. Since political representation and regional demographics were linked with differences in LGBTQ+ hypervigilance, future research should clarify which aspects of identity (e.g., androgyny, passingness) are most salient in different local settings.