A measure of hypervigilance in LGBTQ-identified individuals.

Abstract

Hypervigilance is an individual's heightened awareness to threat or potential threats in their surroundings, may be context specific, and may be associated with negative mental health outcomes. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)-identified individuals may experience hypervigilance related to their stigmatized status. There are few measures of general hypervigilance and no measure of LGBTQ-specific hypervigilance. A sample of LGBTQ-identified individuals (N = 378) was recruited for an online survey. Using exploratory structural equation modeling, we examined the factor structure of 13 items related to where (locations and contextual conditions) and around whom hypervigilance occurred, and 12 items assessing hypervigilant behaviors. Three-factor models were indicated for each set of items. Individuals experienced hypervigilance around strangers, conservative/religious people, and in work settings; they reported hypervigilance as social withdrawal, identity concealment, and scanning behaviors. Individuals who experienced one type of hypervigilant behavior also tended to report other types of hypervigilant behavior. Some group differences by gender identity, sexual identity, and racial/ethnic identity were found; specifically people of color and transgender and nonbinary (TNB) individuals tended to experience more hypervigilance than White and non-TNB individuals, respectively. Expected associations were found between the proposed factors and fear of negative evaluation, depressive and posttraumatic stress symptoms, and satisfaction with life. The suggested factor structure and scales will assist researchers and practitioners in identifying possible LGBTQ-specific hypervigilance and points of intervention.

Hypervigilance: An Understudied Mediator of the Longitudinal Relationship Between Stigma and Internalizing Psychopathology Among Sexual Minority Young Adults

“…Emerging scholarship with other marginalized groups (e.g., racial/ethnic minority young adults; Doery et al, 2022), however, suggests that hypervigilance represents a distinct phenomenon comprising excessive attending and/or responding to (vs. anxious expectations and/or perseverate cognitions surrounding) stigma, which may play a unique mechanistic role in shaping psychological wellbeing among the stigmatized and may even be modulated by these other stigma-related processes (Diamond & Alley, 2022). To enhance the conceptual and mechanistic understanding of this construct, we incorporated a novel sexual minority-specific hypervigilance measure (Riggle et al, 2021) into a longitudinal, population-based study of sexual minority young adults.…”

“…Despite the relevance of this research and theory to sexual minorities' stigma-related experiences and reactions, scholarship with this population has rarely assessed hypervigilance via this constellation of excessive attending, alerting, and/or responding to socially stigmatizing stimuli-i.e., social interactions (e.g., with the non-stigmatized) and settings (e.g., public places) in which exposure to stigma related to one's sexual identity (e.g., discrimination, victimization) historically occurs and/or is acutely perceived (Riggle et al, 2021). Rather, within this research tradition, hypervigilance is often considered to be analogous to and/or a component of one of two stigma-related processes: sexual orientation-related rejection sensitivity and rumination (Dyar et al, 2021;Hatzenbuehler, 2009;Pachankis, 2015;Sarno et al, 2020;Salway et al, 2018).…”

“…First, despite longstanding calls to differentiate hypervigilance from sexual orientationrelated rejection sensitivity and rumination (Meyer, 2003), empirical scholarship has yet to consider whether hypervigilance is conceptually distinct from these processes. This lack of empirical research is partially attributable to the growing conflation of these constructs, which has impeded the development of sexual minority-specific hypervigilance measures (Riggle et al, 2021). Rather than explicitly assessing hypervigilance by capturing attentional bias (e.g., excessive attentional allocation) to socially stigmatizing stimuli and accompanying efforts to locate (e.g., scanning) and/or attenuate (e.g., self-monitoring) stigma-related threat-consistent with hypervigilance's measurement among other stigmatized groups (e.g., racial/ethnic minorities; Clark et al, 2006)-sexual minority mental health research has overwhelmingly drawn on measures of sexual orientation-related rejection sensitivity and rumination (Pachankis et al, 2008;Galupo & Bauerband, 2016).…”

“…A novel sexual minority-specific hypervigilance measure (Riggle et al, 2021)-if deployed in the same study with sexual orientation-related rejection sensitivity and rumination measures-now makes this possible. Relatively small scale and/or factor correlations of hypervigilance with rejection sensitivity and rumination would indicate that this hypervigilance measure of taps into a discrete construct (Rönkkö & Cho, 2020).…”

“…We pursued these three knowledge gaps by interrogating the role of hypervigilance as a conceptually and mechanistically distinct psychological process linking sexual minority stigma to internalizing psychopathology. To accomplish this, we embedded a recently developed sexual minority-specific hypervigilance measure (Riggle et al, 2021) within a longitudinal, populationbased study of Swedish sexual minority young adults. This ongoing investigation includes repeated measures of interpersonal stigma experiences (e.g., perceived discrimination), stigmarelated processes (e.g., sexual orientation-related rejection sensitivity and rumination), and internalizing (i.e., anxiety, depression) symptoms.…”