Gender Typicality, Social Self-Efficacy, and Adjustment in Italian Sexual Minority Young Adults

Abstract

The present study focuses on the relationship between gender typicality, social self-efficacy, and adjustment in a sample of 522 lesbian women, gay men, bisexual, and other non-heterosexual sexual orientation participants. Participants (78.2% women; Mage = 23.8, SD = 3.63) reported their similarity to same- and other-gender peers as a way to assess their gender typicality, social self-efficacy, satisfaction with life, and perceived social safeness. The Path Analysis model showed that - controlling for participants’ gender and sexual orientation- higher same- and other-gender typicality was associated with higher perceived social safeness and higher satisfaction with life, both directly and indirectly through social self-efficacy. The present study contributed to the debate on gender studies by testing same and other gender typicality as independent dimensions of gender typicality in sexual minority young adults, focusing on positive adjustment. Furthermore, the results suggested the role of social self-efficacy as a critical mechanism in the association between gender typicality and sexual minority psychosocial adjustment.