Emotion Work among Transgender and Gender Diverse Adults: Balancing Identity and Interpersonal Connections

Overview: We explored emotion work among 11 transgender and gender-diverse adults. We sought to answer the following questions through qualitative methods (1) what conditions in the social environment elicit emotion work?; (2) what are the major facets of emotion work?; and (3) what is the psychosocial impact of emotion work?Proposal text:

Background: Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) people experience unique stressors due to societal stigmatization of their gender identities (Tan et al., 2019). Emotion work is the art of understanding the emotion rules of a given environment and modifying one's own emotions and those of others accordingly (Zapf et al., 2021). Among sexual minority people, emotion work is utilized to maximize sincere identity expression while maintaining homeostasis in interpersonal connections, namely family, friends, and colleagues (Acosta, 2013; Goffnett et al., 2021). Little is known about the emotion work among TGD people; thus, the overarching goal of this study was to conceptualize emotion work among TGD people while considering the geographic region and the impact on psychosocial wellbeing.



Methods: We conducted semi-structured focus group (n = 3) and individual ( n = 3) interviews with 11 TGD adults during summer 2021. Recruitment occurred via social media advertisements and community partners working with the TGD community. Eligibility criteria included (1) English speaking, (2) at least 18 y/o, (3) Southeastern State residing, and (4) identifying as transgender, non-conforming, or non-binary. Three interviewers asked participants about their identity-related experiences of discrimination and affirmation across different social environments and the consequent emotional, physiological, and behavioral responses. All interviews were conducted via Zoom and transcribed verbatim. Interviewees received a $30 gift card for participating. Four coders assisted with thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). First, two random transcripts were coded line-by-line using a priori codebook, but analysts remained open to new emerging codes. The analytic team met weekly to discuss emergent codes, refine a priori codes, ameliorate incongruencies, and reflect on biases and interpretations. The first two authors used the final codebook to analyze all transcripts, and the entire team collapsed codes into superordinate themes with subordinate themes and defined relationships between themes.

Results: Three superordinate themes emerged from the data: 1) feeling rules and the social environment, 2) balancing identity with interpersonal connections, and 3) psychosocial correlates. We found emotion work is the inequitable effort exerted to maximize identity development, expression and wellbeing while maintaining emotional homeostasis in social environments. Theme one depicts the role of the social environment in facilitating feeling rules that TGD people must comprehend and navigate. Theme two outlines methods TGD adults in Southeastern U.S. utilize to enact emotion work, including avoidance, adapting identity expression, and educating. The final theme demonstrates the psychosocial impact of emotion work.

Conclusions: Social work educators and practitioners need to understand emotion work among TGD people since it has important implications for navigating their identities across various social environments. In fact, research has found that LGBTQ+ students perform emotion work in the social work classroom to advocate for LGBTQ+ issues while not disrupting rapport with the instructor (Wagaman et al., 2021). Furthermore, emotion work may elicit additional psychosocial stress and concomitant coping methods that should be further explored.