Acceptance Concern and Life Satisfaction for Chinese LGBs: The Mediating Role of Self-Concealment

Xiaowen Hu (), Ying Wang () and Chia-huei Wu ()

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, 2013, vol. 114, issue 2, 687-701

Abstract: Past research has suggested that the acceptance concern of lesbians, gays and bisexuals (LGB), defined as LGB individuals’ sensitivity to negative judgement and rejection associated with their sexuality, is negatively related to subjective wellbeing. However, the mechanism underlying this relationship remains unclear. Drawing on social exchange theory, we propose that LGBs’ self-concealment of sexuality is an important mediator, such that acceptance concern leads to a stronger tendency to conceal one’s sexuality, which further causes lower life satisfaction. Furthermore, we expect that different social groups have a different psychological importance for LGB and thus, concealment from different target groups (i.e., family, friends and acquaintances) will have a differential impact on the mediating process. Using a sample of 152 Chinese students who self-identified as LGBs, we found that acceptance concern negatively predicted life satisfaction, and this effect was mediated by individuals’ self-concealment of their sexuality. A closer examination at different social groups revealed that the mediation effect was only found when using self-concealment from the family as the mediator, indicating the important role played by family in shaping Chinese LGBs’ wellbeing. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Keywords: Acceptance concern; Self-concealment; Life satisfaction; Chinese LGB (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11205-012-0168-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:soinre:v:114:y:2013:i:2:p:687-701

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11135

DOI: 10.1007/s11205-012-0168-8

Access Statistics for this article

Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement is currently edited by Filomena Maggino

More articles in Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().