MY RESEARCH

My research primarily centers on four topics: (1) Threats to the femininity of cisgender women’s physical appearances; (2) Beliefs about transgender women and men; (3) Identity, medical transition, and mental health in transgender youth; and (4) Physicians’ biases against sexual minorities.

Physical Femininity Threat

A growing body of literature suggests that although both women and men are subjected to not only descriptive but also prescriptive gender stereotypes—that is, not only beliefs about what they are like but also beliefs about what they should be like—these prescriptions are stronger for men than for women. Consequently, men, but not women, experience distress in response to threats to their gender stereotypicality. In this line of research, I take a new perspective on this gender asymmetry. I examine the possibility that women are distressed by threats to their femininity within the domain of physical appearance.

I have found that cisgender women who are told they are less physically feminine than average report more anxiety and lower self-esteem than cisgender women who are told they are more physically feminine than average (Wittlin, LaFrance, Dovidio, & Richeson, 2024). These effects are mediated by women’s reports that the information they received about their femininity is inconsistent with their own sense of self. The effect of femininity feedback on anxiety holds even when participants’ physical attractiveness is affirmed and even when controlling for self-perceived physical attractiveness.

Categorization and Stereotypes of Transgender Women and Men

Transgender people experience challenges to not only to their gender stereotypicality but also their gender group membership. In this line of research, I examine beliefs about transgender people—both who they are (i.e., categorization) and how they look (i.e., appearance-related stereotypes).

In several studies, I have examined misgendering, a particular form of identity invalidation in which people are categorized in a way that is inconsistent with their gender identity. In one set of studies, I provided participants with information about a transgender woman or man and asked them to categorize that person as female, male, or “other.” Across studies, nearly half of participants explicitly misgendered the target (Wittlin, Dovidio, LaFrance, & Burke, 2018). In another set of studies, my collaborators and I examined a less direct form of misgendering: gender-inconsistent pronoun use (Howansky, Wittlin, Bonagura, & Cole, 2022). We found that participants not not only misgendered transgender targets by describing them with gender-inconsistent pronouns but also degendered them by abstaining from pronoun use altogether.

I have also examined expectations, evaluations, and memory for the physical appearances of transgender women and men (Wittlin et al., 2018). I have found that people not only expect transgender individuals to look less gender stereotypical than their cisgender counterparts but also evaluate and remember a face as looking less gender stereotypical if they believe it belongs to a transgender person than if they believe it belongs to a cisgender person.

Identity, Medical Transition, and Mental Health in Transgender Youth

A mounting body of evidence demonstrates that lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals have poorer mental and physical health outcomes than their heterosexual counterparts. Bias among medical providers can contribute to these disparities. In this line of research, I examine contributors to physician bias against lesbians and gay men.

I am part of a team of researchers that has been following a cohort of resident physicians since their first semester of medical school. As part of this work, I led an investigation into interpersonal experiences during medical school that predict explicit and implicit bias against lesbians and gay men two years later, during second year of residency (Wittlin et al., 2019). I found that the more medical students interacted with LGBT individuals during medical school and the more favorable these interactions were, the less explicit bias they expressed toward lesbian and gay individuals during residency. On the other hand, the more medical students witnessed potential role models—faculty and physicians—demonstrating prejudice against LGBT individuals, the more explicit bias they expressed toward lesbian and gay individuals. Finally, the more medical students interacted with LGBT students during medical school, the less implicit bias against lesbian and gay individuals they demonstrated.