Bisexual plus Visibility Attempts: Associations With Minority Stress, Affect, and Substance Use in a Daily Diary Study

摘要

Public Significance Statement On days when bi+ individuals made their identities visible, they experienced more positive affect and identity affirmation as well as more discrimination and concerns about rejection. The fact that visibility attempts were associated with both positive and negative outcomes appears to be related to the range of supportive and unsupportive contexts in which bi+ individuals attempted to make their identities visible to others. This highlights the roles of others' responses to bi+ visibility attempts in affecting the subsequent consequences of these attempts. The efforts of bisexual+ people to make their sexual orientation visible are associated with positive and negative outcomes, but little is known about the temporality or directionality of these associations. Using data from a 28-day diary study with 208 bi+ individuals, we found that bi+ visibility attempts were concurrently associated with more positive affect, higher identity affirmation, less depressed/anxious affect, as well as more antibisexual experiences and rejection sensitivity. Prospectively, the likelihood of consuming alcohol (but not marijuana) was higher the day after making a visibility attempt, and positive affect was higher the day before making an attempt. Making visibility attempts in contexts that may have been more supportive (e.g., with friends, partners, and lesbian/gay individuals) was associated with more positive outcomes (e.g., more positive affect), while making attempts in contexts that may have been less supportive (e.g., with family, strangers, people who are unaccepting of bi+ identities, and heterosexual people) was associated with more negative outcomes (e.g., higher rejection sensitivity and more discrimination). These findings suggest that the contexts in which visibility attempts are made may play an important role in the impact that bi+ visibility attempts have on stigma-related stress and well-being.