(PS1-C52) Social Anxiety and Gender Identity-related Experiences of Transgender and Gender Diverse Adults

The key mechanism underlying social anxiety is fear of negative evaluation (American Psychiatric Association, 2013; Watson & Friend, 1969) which is characterized as apprehension that one is or could be perceived negatively  by others. Fear of negative evaluation may be particularly salient for transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people who are justifiably concerned about the potential to be rejected or stigmatized, in contrast to social anxiety where likelihood and costs of negative outcomes are over estimated (e.g., Foa et al., 1996).  Although the meaning of fear of negative evaluation may differ for individuals who identify as TGD compared to cisgender samples, perhaps the well-established interventions for social anxiety could be adapted for TGD clients to increase resilience to marginalization stress.  We hypothesized that measures of key aspects of TGD experience such as gender non-congruence, rumination about gender identity, and gender minority stress, would be associated with elevated social anxiety.  Furthermore, we hypothesized that overall well-being and comfort with one’s gender identity would be associated with lower social anxiety. Utilizing data from a validation study of the Trans Collaborations Clinical Check-in (TC³; Holt et al., 2019), a behavioral health progress monitoring self-report measure, 32 TGD participants completed the Transgender Congruence Scale (TCS; Kozee et al., 2012), the Gender Identity Reflection and Ruminations Scale (GRRS; Bauerband et al., 2014), and the Gender Minority Stress and Resilience Scale (GMSR; Testa et al., 2015), the Social Phobia Scale-6 item (SPS-6; Fergus et al., 2012) and the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale-6 item (SIAS-6; Fergus et al., 2012). The SPS-6 measures social anxiety associated with being observed. The SIAS-6 measures anxiety in social interactions. Preliminary correlations revealed higher SPS-6 scores were associated with higher scores on the GRRS Rumination and Preoccupation subscales and GMSR Discrimination and Negative Expectations for the Future subscales and with lower gender congruence on the TCS. As expected, both the SPS-6 and SIAS-6 were negatively correlated with the TC³, a measure of well-being. Additionally, the SIAS-6 and the GRRS Pre-occupation subscale were positively correlated. Overall, these results are an early step in understanding the relationship between social anxiety and experiences of TGD communities and has the potential to inform prevention and intervention efforts.