Â鶹app
McNair Scholar, 2025
Major: Psychology/Women's & Gender Studies
Mentor: Dr. Joshua Davis
Research Title: Transitioning: The Impact of Religious Disaffiliation on Attitudes Towards Gender Transition in Adults
Abstract:
The current study aims to explore the relationship between religious disaffiliation, a change from identification with a religious tradition to identification with no religious tradition, and prejudice against transgender and gender nonconforming individuals. The study will explore whether those who disaffiliate from their religion in young adulthood experience a unique level of anti-transgender attitudes compared to the currently religious (i.e. identifying with a religion) and the continuously irreligious (i.e. those who have never identified with a religion). Despite existing research on other religious factors, such as religious affiliation, biblical literalism, and religiosity contribute to anti-transgender bias, the influence of religious affiliation in childhood and its residual effects on bias has yet to be studied. This research will utilize survey methods to gather unique data on participants' religious lives and attitudes towards transgender individuals. Regression analyses will then be conducted to explore whether the religiously disaffiliated differ in their rates of anti-transgender prejudice than the continuously irreligious, and if they will exhibit less transprejudice than the currently religious. The study hopes to contribute to the already growing body of research examining the correlates of transprejudice, while examining a new facet of religion and transprejudice that has yet to be explored.
