Sexual Orientation Disclosure and Strategic Navigation of Interpersonal Invisibility.

Abstract

People with concealable stigmatized identities may strategically share or hide cues to their identity. They may likewise seek or avoid interpersonal invisibility (i.e., being ignored). Despite semantic similarities, identity concealment and invisibility are conceptually distinct, but existing empirical work has not explored whether they are independent-that is, whether people may sometimes reveal to be invisible, or conceal to be visible. To evaluate this distinction, we collected lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) participants' free-response descriptions of situations where they revealed or concealed their sexual orientation to be visible or invisible (Study 1). Other LGB participants imagined social interactions in which they revealed or concealed their sexual orientation to be visible or invisible and rated their expected emotions in this situation (Study 2). We find that concealment and invisibility can occur independently of one another with separate effects on emotions, and that LGB people use identity disclosure and concealment to strategically navigate interpersonal invisibility.