Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2023

DOI

10.1007/s12144-021-02068-w

Publication Title

Current Psychology

Volume

42

Pages

7421–7432

Abstract

To date, the majority of research studying lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) health has been conducted in Westernized, predominantly individualistic countries. Building on minority stress theory and models of LGBTQ health, we explored how sexual orientation and nationality moderated the association between internalized heterosexism and life satisfaction for lesbian and bisexual (LB) women living in two countries (Turkey and Belgium) with contrasting social contexts. The results of two-way MANOVA, in a sample of 339 Turkish and 220 Belgian LB women, revealed main effects but no interaction effects. LB women in Belgium reported less internalized heterosexism and more life satisfaction than LB women in Turkey. The results of moderation analyses indicated no moderation effect, however internalized heterosexism and country emerged as the best predictors of life satisfaction. Findings were interpreted with a focus on how culture-specific aspects contribute to life satisfaction among LB women. Our findings suggest mental health professionals working with LB women need to tailor therapeutic interventions to reflect the social context connected to their patients' nationality, in order to effectively address internalized heterosexism, improve life satisfaction, and promote self- and social advocacy. Cultural values, such as adherence to collectivistic or individualistic norms, should be included as variables in future research examining determinants of LGBTQ health.

Rights

Accepted: 1 July 2021/Published online: 13 July 2021

© The Author(s) 2021

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

ORCID

0000-0002-5586-3415 (Moe)

Original Publication Citation

Ummak, E., Toplu-Demirtaş, E., Pope, A. L., & Moe, J. (2021). The influence of internalized heterosexism on life satisfaction: Comparing sexual minority women in Belgium and Turkey. Current Psychology, 43, 17421–7432. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-021-02068-w

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