Religiosity and spirituality: Psychological gender essentialism as a mediator for transnegative prejudice

In recent years there has been increasing interest of issues regarding transgender individuals and transgender rights. The transgender community has often been faced with misunderstanding and individuals within it have been victims of prejudice. The current research seeks to examine attitudes towards transgender individuals in the context of religion and gender essentialism. Specifically, it seeks to discover what types of religiosity and spirituality are most related to transnegativity, and whether gender essentialism partially mediates this relationship. To investigate this, survey data was collected from undergraduate students (n = 166) measuring multidimensional spirituality, gender essentialism, and attitudes towards transgender individuals, and the data was analyzed using four mediation models. Results indicated that multidimensional spirituality was significantly predictive of transnegative attitudes, with gender essentialism mediating this relationship. These findings have important implications for understanding spirituality, gender essentialism, and prejudice. Most importantly, these findings indicate areas where prejudice could be mitigated.