









































127

Graduate Student Journal of Psychology
2023, Vol. 20

Copyright 2023 by the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology
Teachers College, Columbia University

The Impact of a Brief Humanizing Intervention on 
Prejudice Towards Transgender Individuals

Aya Touma Sawaya and Megan K. McCarty
Simmons University, Boston, Massachusetts

 Transgender is an umbrella term used to describe 
people’s experiences with gender identity. Transgender 
individuals are people whose sex assigned at birth does 
not align with their true gender identity. Transgender 
men are men who were assigned female at birth and 
transgender women are women who were assigned 
male at birth (National Center for Transgender Equal-
ity, 2016). 
 The limited body of literature surrounding peo-
ple in this community and their experiences has been 
growing over recent years. This literature consistent-
ly demonstrates that transgender individuals face an 
abundance of stigma and prejudice from society, mak-
ing them vulnerable to discrimination and violence 
(Pellicane & Ciesla, 2022). Prejudice is defined as a 
negative attitude or negative behavior towards a per-
son or a group of people based on their belonging to a 
certain social group (Allport & Lindzey, 1954). Trans-
gender people are twice as likely to be unemployed 
compared to the larger population because of laws 
and policies that allow employment discrimination 
(National LGBTQ Task Force, 2022). The 2022 Na-
tional Survey by The Trevor Project showed that 71% 
of transgender and non-binary youth reported having 
been discriminated against based on their gender iden-
tity. In addition, transgender folk are four times more 
likely to be sexually assaulted, raped, or assaulted in 
comparison to their cisgender counterparts (Williams 
Institute, 2021). Thirty-seven percent of transgender 
and non-binary youth have reported being physically 

threatened or harmed because of their gender identity 
(The Trevor Project, 2022). Seventy-three percent of 
these youth experience symptoms of anxiety and 58% 
experience symptoms of depression and 1 in 5 trans-
gender or non-binary youth have attempted suicide in 
the past year (The Trevor Project, 2022). Moreover, 
discrimination restricts transgender individuals from 
receiving healthcare (Hughto et al., 2015). For exam-
ple, in Minnesota, around 20% of transgender folk 
reported that they had been denied healthcare com-
pletely and many others said that they have had poor 
healthcare experiences (Health Partners, 2017).
 This discrimination affects the quality of life that 
transgender individuals have, especially affecting the 
mental health of transgender folk. Minority stress 
theory can be used to better understand the rates of 
mental health hardships that transgender individuals 
face. Minority stress theory states that marginalized 
communities experience unique and constant expo-
sure to harsh stressors because of their identity. Due 
to the presence of such chronic stress and continuous 
discrimination which stigmatizes these individuals, 
they are at a higher risk of developing mental health 
issues (Meyer, 2003). The hardships that transgender 
folk experience have caused high rates of suicide ide-
ation and attempts among transgender youth (Gross-
man & D’Augelli, 2010). For example, being misgen-
dered and discriminated against by society can cause 
transgender individuals to experience significant psy-
chological distress. Additionally, due to high levels of 

Transgender individuals face an abundance of stigma and prejudice from society, making them vulnerable to dis-
crimination, violence, increased stress, and mental health deterioration (Hughto et al., 2015). This study looked 
at the extent to which a brief humanizing intervention can decrease prejudice against transgender individuals us-
ing methods designed to reduce social desirability bias. Unlike past work, the current study implemented a con-
trol group that was not subjected to any intervention. Participants (N=302) were randomly assigned to one of 
three conditions: the control condition, the transman letter condition, and the musician letter condition. Only 
cisgender participants within the gender binary were used in the analysis (N=293). The humanizing interven-
tion involved having participants read a letter written by a transgender man in which he comes out to his parents. 
The musician letter condition involved having participants read a letter written by a young man telling his par-
ents that he is quitting college to pursue a career in music. The control condition did not include any letter. Par-
ticipants then responded to various dependent measures such as attitudes towards transgender individuals and 
empathy. Few effects of the intervention were observed, which were inconsistent with past research. However, the 
results of this study showed an impact on participants’ perception of how parents should react to their children 
coming out and a decrease in the standard gender differences in empathy. Thus, the results offer a nuanced under-
standing of the extent to which humanizing interventions can reduce prejudice towards transgender individuals. 
 Keywords: Social Psychology, Prejudice Reduction, Humanizing Intervention, Transgender 



128128

discrimination, transgender individuals are more likely 
to experience loneliness and a lack of belongingness to 
a community. This triggers transgender folk to engage 
in negative self-appraisal and have low self-esteem and 
low self-worth. In turn, this leads to higher levels of 
suicidal ideation and attempts within the transgender 
community (Hendricks & Testa, 2012). Although 
society can negatively affect transgender individuals’ 
health, social support, in comparison, can mitigate the 
presence of psychological distress (McLemore, 2018).
Reducing Transphobia
 Although it can be helpful to provide transgender 
individuals with support and resources to cope with 
societal discrimination, this support does not direct-
ly address nor decrease discrimination. Because the 
transgender community is subject to higher rates of 
discrimination and violence, it is imperative to study 
prejudice reduction methods that can ameliorate the 
quality of life of trans folk (Tompkins et al., 2015). 
Although the body of literature in this field has been 
growing recently, there is still relatively little research 
looking at the efficacy of interventions that reduce 
transphobia, or prejudice towards transgender folk. 
 The existing body of research surrounding this 
topic investigates a number of different types of in-
terventions that reduce prejudice. Educational inter-
ventions involve giving participants scientific infor-
mation about the lives of transgender individuals to 
increase the former’s awareness of transgender lives 
and decrease transphobia (Chan et al., 2009). One 
study aimed to measure the efficacy of an education-
al webinar training by subjecting participants to three 
awareness trainings: an anti-stigma training, a panel 
training, and a webinar, each of which provided edu-
cational information about transgender lives such as 
the effect of transphobia on transgender lives and the 
different forms of gender affirmation (Mizock et al., 
2017). Participants’ transphobic attitudes were tested 
before and after the training. Although all the train-
ing showed a reduction in transphobia, the webinar 
proved to be an especially valuable tool for spreading 
awareness because of the flexibility it offered being in-
ternet-based. This finding is consistent with previous 
literature which suggested webinar training, in gen-
eral, was more effective in disseminating information 
than other forms of educational training (Mizock et 
al., 2017). Furthermore, another study focusing on 
healthcare workers also suggested that educational 

training increased awareness about the needs of trans-
gender individuals and led to better healthcare for the 
transgender community (McDowell et al., 2020).  
 Although educational training is effective at re-
ducing transphobia, they tend to focus mainly on the 
scientific explanation of transgender lives, highlight-
ing the biological and definitional framework of being 
transgender. These trainings fail to include the valu-
able layer of humanizing transgender individuals by 
showing the lived experiences of transgender folk and 
inciting empathy. In order to humanize transgender 
individuals, researchers thought to broaden transgen-
der awareness beyond just the biological explanation 
by sharing information about personal transgender 
experiences. Sharing these experiences is meant to not 
only educate people about transgender lives but to 
also incite empathy, which can reduce bias (Whitford 
& Emerson, 2019). Empathy is the act of understand-
ing another person’s thoughts and feelings. Previous 
literature indicates that empathy has played a signifi-
cant role in decreasing prejudice against the Lesbian, 
Gay, and Bisexual community provoking participants 
to imagine what other people’s lives may be like (Hod-
son et al., 2009). Past studies looked at how prejudice 
reduction affected a specific marginalized community 
and ran studies to see if the same effect would occur 
in a separate minority community. Thus, researchers 
saw how empathy affected prejudice against the LGB 
community and hypothesized that it could have that 
desired effect on the transgender community.
 Intergroup contact theory has been used to hu-
manize transgender folk and incite empathy. Inter-
group contact theory states that, under the right con-
ditions, the interaction of one group with another 
can lead to more positive attitudes between the two 
groups (Allport, 1954). Participants in one study on 
intergroup contact were randomly assigned into two 
groups: one which received a panel presentation by a 
transgender person followed by a lecture presentation 
two days later, and another which received the same 
presentations but in reverse order (Walch et al., 2012). 
The group who received the transgender panel presen-
tation first showed less stigma against transgender in-
dividuals compared to those who received the lecture 
first. Thus, it can be inferred, experiencing humaniz-
ing contact with a transgender person before learning 
more factual information about them primes partici-
pants to respond more positively to learning informa-

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



129

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

tion about transgender individuals. This study showed 
that although brief, meaningful contact with the trans-
gender presenter resulted in more stigma reduction 
that lasted for a prolonged period in comparison to the 
other condition. Although contact can reduce trans-
phobia, it puts a lot of pressure, burden, and respon-
sibility on transgender folk, and it may not be logisti-
cally feasible. To address these concerns, a follow-up 
study explored whether imagined intergroup contact 
can have the same effect as actual intergroup contact 
(Moss-Racusin & Rabasco, 2017). Participants either 
engaged in imagined intergroup contact with a cis-
gender person or with a transgender person and were 
then asked to rate how they felt about these people 
and whether transgender folk were likable and hirable. 
Imagined intergroup contact reduced transphobia and 
eliminated the difference previously present around 
hireability and likeability between cisgender and trans-
gender persons. In other words, imagined intergroup 
contact was an efficacious intervention to decrease 
transphobia. Inspired by this work, the effect of virtu-
al contact with transgender individuals has also been 
studied (Boccanfuso et al., 2020). In this follow-up, 
participants were randomly assigned into two groups 
that had virtual contact through a text-chat program 
with someone who either told them that she was a cis-
gender woman or that she was a transgender woman. 
Participants were then asked to respond to a question-
naire that assessed transgender stigma. Results showed 
that this intervention successfully reduced transpho-
bia in cisgender men but not in cisgender women. The 
reason behind this effect is the fact that cisgender men 
typically have more prejudice towards transgender in-
dividuals. Contact with transgender folk more heavily 
affects “prejudice-prone populations” and can alter 
their prejudice the most (Hodson, 2011). 
 The aforementioned literature focused on study-
ing the efficacy of education and contact interventions 
alone as opposed to comparing them to one another 
and testing their efficacy. Case & Stewart (2013) in-
tended to fill in some of the gaps in the literature by 
designing a study made of three experimental interven-
tions and comparing their efficacy. Participants were 
recruited from different social science courses in a state 
university in Texas and assigned to one of three in-
terventions: providing participants with a list of facts 
about transgenderism (educational intervention), pro-
viding participants with a letter from a transgender 

adolescent to his parents (humanizing intervention), 
and showing participants a snippet of a documenta-
ry about transgender students in college (humanizing 
intervention). The documentary included the parents’ 
reactions to the letter. The humanizing interventions 
were meant to incite empathy from participants to-
ward transgender individuals. Participants were in-
structed to answer a questionnaire before and after 
the interventions that measured their attitudes toward 
transgender individuals. No intervention was more ef-
fective than the other. Motivated by the comparison of 
humanizing and educational interventions, Tompkins 
and colleagues (2015) also randomly assigned partici-
pants to experience either a humanizing or education-
al intervention. The humanizing condition showed 
participants that transgender folk are actual people 
with lives and incited empathy towards their struggles 
by having them watch a documentary about a trans-
gender child who was supported by her parents in her 
transition. In the education condition, participants 
read about the diagnostic criteria for Gender Identity 
Disorder and then watched an interview with an ex-
pert who explained the process of transitioning and 
provided factual information about transgender indi-
viduals devoid of emotions. After participating in one 
of these two interventions, the participants completed 
self-report measures of feelings and attitudes towards 
transgender individuals. Participants in the human-
izing condition endorsed less transphobic attitudes 
than those in the education condition. This finding 
suggests that humanizing interventions may be most 
effective at reducing transphobia among participants 
(Tompkins et al., 2015).
The Present Study
 Although past research has compared the effi-
cacy of different interventions designed to reduce 
transphobia, it has not employed strong control con-
ditions. The current study focused on a humanizing 
intervention, as some research suggests they are more 
successful at reducing transphobia than education in-
terventions (Tompkins et al., 2015). Specifically, the 
current study was encouraged to use one of the hu-
manizing interventions from Case and Stewart (2013). 
Their letter intervention involved participants reading 
a letter written by an adolescent who came out to his 
parents as a transgender man. The letter’s goal was to 
invoke a sense of empathy within participants when 
they completed a transphobia questionnaire and the 



130

results of this group were compared to the results of 
other types of interventions. Both this study and oth-
ers (e.g. Case & Stewart, 2013; Tompkins et al., 2015; 
Mizock et al.,2017) lacked independent control con-
ditions that could have provided them with a baseline 
and would have strengthened their ability to assess 
the efficacy of the interventions. Researchers did use 
a pretest measure, but pretest measures can increase 
participants’ awareness about the true purpose of 
the study and lead participants to artificially give less 
transphobic answers. While previous research was an 
important initial step in studying approaches to trans-
phobia reduction, these prior studies also shared the 
weaknesses of having a small sample size and utilizing 
college student samples, who typically have a less con-
servative outlook on gender identity than the general 
population (Campbell & Horowitz, 2015). The cur-
rent work seeks to extend prior research by addressing 
some of their potential weaknesses. Thus, this study 
will primarily look at the extent to which a brief em-
pathetic intervention can decrease prejudice against 
transgender individuals while also reducing social de-
sirability bias. Social desirability bias is the tendency of 
research participants to answer questions in a manner 
they assume the researchers desire (Crowne & Mar-
lowe, 1960). This study often refers to transphobia as 
prejudice towards transgender individuals The current 
work supplements past research by using a separate 
control group that was not subjected to any interven-
tion and then completed the same questionnaire as 
participants in the other groups. This condition pro-
vides an independent baseline to compare with the 
results of the interventions. Participants in the key 
intervention condition were instructed to read a letter 
written by a young man coming out to his parents as a 
transgender man, which was brought about by the let-
ter presented in Case & Stewart (2013). This interven-
tion is meant to instigate empathy towards him and 
reduce transphobia. The current work also extends 
prior research by testing another condition, a parallel 
version of the transman letter condition about a young 
adult telling his parents that he will be dropping out 
of college to pursue music. This intervention intends 
to instill empathy in participants towards the young 
adult to study if empathy in general affects individu-
als’ prejudice against transgender folk. After complet-
ing one of the three conditions, participants answered 
self-report measures of transphobia and a number of 

other dependent variables related to prejudice and in-
tergroup attitudes.
 We expected to find a significant main effect of 
our manipulation such that participants in the trans-
man letter condition would have more positive reac-
tions across all of our dependent variables, including 
lower levels of transphobia and prejudice, compared 
to participants in the control group (Hypothesis 
1). This prediction is consistent with prior research 
which shows that implementing a humanizing in-
tervention (transman letter condition) that incites 
empathy can decrease prejudice against transgender 
individuals (Tompkins et al., 2015). Additionally, we 
explored whether participants in the musician letter 
condition would differ from participants in the con-
trol and transman letter conditions. This letter about 
a young man dropping out of college to be a musician 
was meant to incite empathy from the participants to-
ward his difficult situation. This condition enabled the 
current study to look at whether transphobia can be 
decreased solely by enticing empathy generally, as op-
posed to empathy about trans lives specifically. Previ-
ous literature shows that humanizing interventions are 
able to reduce prejudice towards minority groups such 
as people from different racial groups, people with 
mental illness, and people in the LGB community 
(Whitford & Emerson, 2019). If these effects hold true 
for transphobia, then participants in the musician let-
ter condition may have less negative opinions towards 
transgender folk versus the control condition. How-
ever, since the empathy produced from the musician 
letter condition is not inspired by the vulnerability of 
the transgender man’s experience, it was predicted to 
have less of an impact on transphobia compared to the 
transman letter condition (Hypothesis 2). 
 Although the current work focuses on the effect 
of our manipulation, this study also explored the role 
of participant gender. This study explored whether 
cisgender men would generally have more negative 
responses across dependent variables, including high-
er levels of transphobia, compared to women (Hy-
pothesis 3). Men tend to hold more power in society 
compared to other gender identities, benefit from 
maintaining the status quo, and therefore feel more 
threatened by non-normative experiences (West & 
Borras-Guevara, 2021). Indeed, previous research has 
shown that men have more negative attitudes toward 
transgender individuals than women (Tebbe & Mora-

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



131

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

di, 2012; Tompkins et al., 2015). This study also ex-
plored whether our manipulation would interact with 
participant gender (Hypothesis 4).

Methods
Participants
 This study was conducted through Amazon’s 
Mechanical Turk (MTurk) which is a website used 
by researchers to recruit and compensate participants 
for a variety of kinds of tasks including psychological 
studies (Buhrmester, Kwang, & Gosling, 2011). Three 
hundred and two participants were recruited from the 
United States only and completed the study. They were 
compensated $2.50 for their participation. We ran an 
a priori power analysis using G*Power to determine 
sample size (Faul, Erdfelder, Buchner & Lang, 2009). 
Given our design, we set alpha to .05 and assumed a 
small effect size of partial eta squared .035. The analysis 
indicated that 270 participants would provide us with 
80% power. We decided to run up to 300 participants 
in case we needed to exclude any participants, and 
due to an MTurk glitch, 302 participants responded. 
 195 participants indicated that they identify as fe-
male, 98 identified as male, 2 identified as transgender 
men, and 3 identified as non-binary individuals. The 
remaining 4 either chose not to respond or added a cat-
egory of their own. As our analyses required roughly 
equal groups of participant gender, we only had the 
statistical power to analyze cisgender male and cisgen-
der female participants (N = 293). The participants’ 
average age was 35.53 years old (SD = 12.04). The 
majority (70.9%) of participants identified as White/
Caucasian, 13.6% identified as African American, 
7.5% identified as Asian/Pacific Islander, and 6.4% 
identified as Hispanic. The rest of the participants 
indicated they identified with another racial category 
or selected multiple identifications (for more infor-
mation about demographics see Table 1 and Table 2).
Design
 The study used a 3-letter condition (no letter 
group vs. musician letter group vs. transgender let-
ter group) x 2 participant gender (male participants 
vs. female participants) between-subjects design.
Procedure and Manipulation
 The study was conducted using the web survey 
software, Qualtrics. Participants were asked to com-
plete a survey called “Other People’s Stories.” They 
were then randomly assigned to one of three groups: 

one with no letter, one instructed to read a letter about 
an individual coming out to his parents as a transgender 
man, and one with a letter about a student who is tell-
ing his parents he wants to drop out of college to pur-
sue music. The transgender letter was taken from Case 
& Stewart (2013); originally, the letter was found in 
“True Selves: Understanding Transsexuality’’ (Brown 
& Rounsley, 1996). This book includes real-life expe-
riences of transgender people to provide insight into 
their families and help them better understand the 
hardships that transgender people go through. This is 
a real letter from a transgender man coming out to his 
parents. For this study, the letter was slightly edited: 
due to ethical concerns, parts that mentioned suicide/
suicidal ideation were removed so as to not expose the 
participants to such topics. The musician’s letter was 
based largely on the transgender letter. It was created 
to make sure there was a group of participants who 
were exposed to a letter simulation that did not involve 
transgender experiences. The musician and transgen-
der letters were intended to be as parallel as possible, 
but with the musician’s letter involving a child dis-
closing something difficult to their parents unrelated 
to gender. An example of the difference between these 
two letters can be seen here: in the musician’s letter 
the following was said “For the longest time, I had been 
deeply unhappy with my major- the life plan I am sup-
posed to want,” whereas the transgender letter said, “For 
the longest time, I had been deeply unhappy with the 
body I am in- the body I am supposed to feel comfortable 
in.” See Appendices A and B for the complete letters.
 After reading the transgender letter, musician 
letter, or no letter, the participants were all instruct-
ed to answer the same series of questions. The ques-
tionnaire included variables detailed in the dependent 
measures section below, as well as filler questions such 
as the big five personality measure (Morizot, 2014). 
All scales included a prefer not to respond option. 
Finally, participants were debriefed regarding the 
true purpose of the study, which was to understand 
the effect of empathy on prejudice against transgen-
der individuals. Participants were asked to re-con-
sent given this information and offered the oppor-
tunity to have their data discarded. All participants 
re-consented and allowed for the use of their data. 
Dependent Measures
Transphobia. Participants were asked to respond to 
nine questions regarding their attitudes towards gen-



132

der-diverse and transgender individuals on a scale 
from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) (Na-
goshi et al., 2008). An example question is “I believe 
that a person can never change their gender” (α=.93).
Attitudes Towards Transgender Individuals. Par-
ticipants were asked to respond to 20 questions measur-
ing the way people feel about transgender individuals 
on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) 
(Walch et al., 2012). An example question is “I avoid 
transgender individuals whenever possible” (α=.97).
Feelings Thermometer. Participants completed an 
adapted version of the Feelings Thermometer (Mur-
phy et al., 2011) which asked them to rate how 
warm they felt towards groups on a scale of 0 to 100 
(0 being not warm at all and 100 being complete-
ly warm). The groups they were asked to rate their 
feelings towards were transgender men, transgen-
der women, and non-binary individuals (α=.98).
Inclusion of Other in Self. Participants completed 
an adapted version of the Inclusion of Other in the Self 
Scale (Aron et al., 1992). Participants were presented 
with seven sets of increasingly overlapping circles, one 
labeled ‘self’ and the second labeled “other.” These sets 
of circles began with no overlap and got progressively 
more overlapping. Participants were asked to choose 
the circle that best represents their relationship with 
a group, with “self” being themselves and “other” 
representing: transgender men, transgender women, 
and non-binary individuals. They were asked to do 
so three times for the three different groups (α=.95).
Exploratory Dependent Measures
Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). Participants 
were asked to respond to 16 questions measuring lev-
els of empathy on a scale from 1 (does not describe 
me well) to 5 (describes me very well) (Davis, 1980) 
(α=.81). This scale is made up of four different sub-
scales, each comprised of four items. Example ques-
tions of the four subscales perspective taking, fantasy, 
empathetic concern, and personal distress respective-
ly are: “I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagree-
ment before I make a decision” (α=.81). “I really get 
involved with the feelings of the characters in a novel” 
(α=.84). “I often have tender, concerned feelings for 
people less fortunate than me” (α=.77). “ In emergency 
situations, I feel apprehensive and ill-at-ease” (α=.78).
Privilege and Oppression Inventory (POI). This 
scale was included as an exploratory measure to ob-
serve the effect that the intervention had on partici-

pants’ perception of their social power and other peo-
ple’s marginalization within society. Participants were 
asked to respond to 22 questions regarding their aware-
ness of privilege and oppression in society on a scale 
from 1 (strongly disagree) to 6 (strongly agree) (Hays 
et al., 2007). An example question is “Being White 
and having an advantage go hand in hand” (α=.97).
Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. This scale was in-
cluded in order to observe whether the intervention 
could impact participants’ levels of ambivalent sexism. 
Ambivalent sexism is made up of two sub-groups: be-
nevolent sexism and hostile sexism. Benevolent sexism 
is characterized by seemingly positive comments that 
are actually damaging to a person. Hostile sexism is 
characterized by blunt and negative comments that ad-
here to harmful gender stereotypes. Participants were 
asked to respond to 22 statements concerning their 
views on men and women within society on a scale 
of 1 (disagree strongly) to 6 (agree strongly) (Glick 
& Fiske, 1996) (α=.88). This scale is divided into two 
subscales each comprised of eleven items. An example 
of the first subscale, benevolent sexism, is “In a disas-
ter, women ought not necessarily to be rescued before 
men” (α=.84). An example of the second subscale, hos-
tile sexism, is “Women are too easily offended” (α=.83). 
System Justification. This scale was added to observe 
the effect of the intervention on how fair participants 
believe social systems are and whether or not they sup-
port the current social system.  Participants were asked to 
respond to 8 items measuring how fair participants feel 
that social systems are on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) 
to 9 (strongly agree) (Kay & Jost, 2003). An example 
item is “In general, you find society to be fair” (α=.86).
Need for Closure. This scale was added as an ex-
ploratory measure of how this intervention could 
impact participants’ need for certainty and order and 
measure participants’ ability to accept uncertainty. 
Participants were asked to respond to 15 questions 
regarding their need for certainty and how much 
they value order on a scale from 1 (strongly dis-
agree) to 6 (strongly agree) (Neuberg et al., 1997). 
An example question is “I don’t like to be with peo-
ple who are capable of unexpected actions” (α=.87).
Reactions to Coming Out.  Participants were asked 
to rate the degree to which they should respond with 
five different reactions parents could have to their son 
coming out to them on a scale of 1 (strongly disagree) 
to 7 (strongly agree). The potential reactions to coming 

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



133

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

out were based on data from an article that reported 
first-person reports of parents dealing with their kids 
coming out as transgender (Wren, 2002). An example 
item is: “Take Adam to see a specialist and change his 
mind’’ (α=.75). Using the same scale, participants were 
then asked to respond to the same five reactions, ex-
cept this time, they were asked to imagine how they 
would respond if they were in the shoes of those par-
ents. An example item is “Get the proper profession-
al help to support Adam and his decisions” (α=.76).
Manipulation Checks and Demographics 
 Participants were asked four questions and all 
items had a “Prefer not to respond” option. The first 
manipulation check asked participants “Did you read 
a letter at the beginning of this study” with answer 
options: “Yes”, and “No.” The second manipulation 
check asked participants: “ If yes, what was this letter 
about?” and had answer options: “Someone telling 
their parents that they are actually a man and will be 
going through a gender transition”, “Someone telling 
their parents that they will be dropping out of college to 
pursue music”, and “I did not read a letter.” The third 
manipulation check asked participants: “Who wrote 
the letter that you read” with answers: “A transgender 
man (a man assigned female at birth)”, “A transgender 
woman (a woman assigned male at birth)”, “A cisgen-
der man (a man assigned male at birth)”, “A cisgender 
woman (a woman assigned female at birth)”, “The gen-
der of the letter was not specified”, and “I did not read 
a letter.” Finally, the fourth manipulation check asked: 
“If you read a letter, how did it end?” with answer op-
tions: “with love, Adam”, “with love, Alice (soon to 
be known as Adam)”, and “I did not read a letter.”
Demographics. After completing the questions, 
participants were asked to answer a few demo-
graphic measures such as gender, age, and race.

Results
Manipulation Checks
 Chi-square tests of independence were performed 
on each manipulation check. Participants’ responses 
to the first manipulation check regarding whether or 
not they read a letter were significantly associated with 
the actual letter condition, χ2 (2, N = 292) = 211.56, 
p < .001. All participants in both the transman letter 
condition and the musician letter condition reported 
that they read a letter at the beginning of the study. 
80.00% of participants in the control condition re-

ported that they did not read a letter at the begin-
ning of the study. This could be due to the fact that 
early in the study participants were told that other 
participants would be reading a letter. Thus, partic-
ipants were instructed to answer the questionnaire 
knowing that other participants have read a letter.
 Participants’ responses to the second manip-
ulation check that asked them what the letter was 
about were significantly associated with the actual 
letter condition, χ2 (4, N = 292) = 471.76, p <.001. 
98.9% of participants in the transman letter condi-
tion correctly reported that they read a letter about 
a transman coming out to his parents. 99.01% of 
participants in the musician condition correctly re-
ported that they read a letter about an aspiring musi-
cian. 81.00% of participants in the control condition 
correctly reported that they had not read a letter. 
 Participants’ responses to the third manipulation 
check that asked them about the gender identity of the 
person writing the letter were significantly associated 
with the actual letter condition, χ2 (10, N = 290) = 4 
70.51, p <.001. 87.91% of the participants in the trans-
man letter condition reported that the person writing 
the letter was a transgender man. 98.02% of partic-
ipants in the musician letter condition reported that 
the person writing the letter was either a cis-gender 
man or they indicated that the gender identity was not 
disclosed. Both of these options were considered to be 
correct because the letter’s author used a name that is 
stereotypically male and did not specify their gender 
identity explicitly. 81.63% of the participants in the con-
trol condition indicated that they did not read a letter.
 Participants’ responses to the fourth manipu-
lation check that asked them how the letter ended 
were significantly associated with the actual letter 
condition, χ2 (4, N = 290) = 445.00, p <.001. 91.3% 
of the participants in the transman letter condition 
reported that the letter ended with “With love, Alice 
(soon to be known as Adam).” 100.00% of partici-
pants in the musician letter correctly reported that 
their letter ended with “With love, Adam.” Finally, 
81.82% of the participants in the control condition 
correctly indicated that they did not read a letter. 
Primary Analyses
 Between-subjects 3 (letter condition: no letter 
group vs. musician letter group vs. transgender letter 
group) x 2 (participant gender: male vs. female)ANO-
VAs were conducted on each of our depen dent varia-.



134

bles.Follow-up Tukey tests were conducted on 
significant main effects of letter condition. Al-
though our pre-registration focused primarily on 
the effects of letter condition only, the analysis with 
participant gender is reported here since consis-
tent participant gender effects emerged, and this 
analysis was also outlined in the pre-registration.
Transphobia. A significant effect of participant gender 
emerged such that men reported greater overall trans-
phobia (M = 3.51, SD = 1.49) than women (M = 3.03, 
SD = 1.54), F (1,  287) = 6.07, p = .014, ηp

2 = .02. There 
was no main effect of letter condition on transphobia, 
F (2, 287) = 0.60, p = .549, ηp

2 = .00, nor was there a sig-
nificant interaction, F (2, 287) = 1.16, p = .316, ηp

2 = .01
Attitudes Towards Transgender Individuals. 
There was no main effect of participant gender 
on attitudes towards transgender individuals, F 
(1, 285) = 3.42, p = .065, ηp

2 = .01. There was also 
no main effect of letter condition on attitudes to-
wards transgender individuals, F (2, 285) = 1.37, 
p = .256, ηp

2 = .01, nor was there a significant in-
teraction, F (2, 285) = 1.89,p = .153, ηp

2 = .01.
Feelings Thermometer. A significant effect of par-
ticipant gender emerged such that women reported 
warmer feelings towards transgender men (M = 70.50, 
SD = 31.19) that did men (M = 60.82, SD = 33.34), 
F (1, 287) = 5.48, p = .020, ηp

2 = .02. Similarly, a sig-
nificant effect of participant gender emerged such that 
women reported warmer feelings towards transgender 
women (M = 69.49, SD = 32.27) than did men (M = 
60.71, SD = 33.76), F (1, 287) = 4.38, p = .037, ηp

2 = 
.02. There was no main effect of letter condition on 
feelings towards transgender men, F (2, 287) = 0.26, 
p = .755, ηp

2 = .00, nor towards transgender women, 
F (2, 287) = 0.04, p = .964, ηp

2 = .00. Additionally, nor 
was there a significant interaction between participant 
gender and letter condition when it came to transgen-
der men, F (2, 287) = 1.80, p = .168, ηp

2 = .01 and trans-
gender women F (2, 287) = 1.37, p = .256, ηp

2 = .01.
 There was no significant effect of participant 
gender on feelings towards non-binary individu-
als, F (1, 287) = 3.69, p = .056, ηp

2 = .01. There was 
no main effect of letter condition on feelings to-
wards non-binary individuals, F (2, 287) = 0.28, 
p = .754, ηp

2 = .00, nor was there a significant in-
teraction, F (2, 287) = .69, p = .503, ηp

2 = .01.
Inclusion of Other in Self. There was no significant 
effect of participant gender on how close they felt 

towards transgender men, F (1, 279) = .08, p = .785, 
ηp

2 = .00. There was no main effect of letter condi-
tion on feelings towards transgender men, F (2, 279) 
= 0.71, p = .491, ηp

2 = .01, nor was there a significant 
interaction, F (2, 279) = .211, p = .810, ηp

2 = .00.
 There was no significant effect of participant 
gender on how close they felt towards transgen-
der women, F (1, 278) = .01, p = .925, ηp

2 = .00. 
There was no main effect of letter condition on 
feelings towards transgender women, F (2, 278) 
= 0.36, p = .698, ηp

2 = .00, nor was there a signifi-
cant interaction, F (2, 278) = .28, p = .756, ηp

2 = .00.
 There was no significant effect of participant 
gender on how close they felt towards non-bina-
ry individuals, F ( 1, 278) = .01, p = .924, ηp

2 = .00. 
There was no main effect of letter condition on 
feelings towards non-binary individuals, F (2, 278) 
= 0.46, p = .630, ηp

2 = .00, nor was there a signifi-
cant interaction, F (2, 278) = .27, p = .767, ηp

2 = .00.
Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI). A signifi-
cant effect of participant gender emerged such that 
women scored higher on perspective taking (M = 4.12, 
SD = 0.73) than men (M = 3.86, SD = 0.77), F (1, 286) 
= 7.14, p = .008, ηp

2 = .02. There was no main effect 
of letter condition on perspective taking, F (2, 286) = 
0.52, p = .595, ηp

2 = .00. However, a significant inter-
action between letter condition and gender emerged, F 
(2, 286) = 4.35, p = .014, ηp

2 = .03. Women scored high-
er on perspective taking (M = 4.23, SD = 0.67) than 
men (M = 3.88, SD = 0.86) in the control condition, F 
(1, 286) = 5.04, p = .026, ηp

2 = .02. Women also scored 
higher on perspective taking (M = 4.22, SD = 0.73) 
than men (M = 3.70, SD = 0.70) in the musician letter 
condition, F (1, 286) = 10.90, p = .001, ηp

2= .04. How-
ever, there was no gender difference in the transman 
letter condition, F (1, 286) = 0.64, p = .424, ηp

2 = .00 
(Mwomen = 3.89, SD = .75; Mmen = 4.02, SD = 0.73) (See 
Figure 1). When broken down the other way, analy-
ses show that there was no effect of letter condition 
among men, F (2, 286) = 1.42, p = .244, ηp

2 = .01, but 
there was an effect of letter condition among women, 
F (2, 286) = 4.45, p = .013, ηp

2 = .03. Follow-up Tukey
tests indicate that women in the control condition and 
women in the musician letter condition scored high-
er on perspective taking than women in the transman 
let ter condition (p = .010 and p = .009 respectively). 
There was no difference in perspective taking between 
women in the control and musician letter conditions, 

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



135

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

p = .980.
 A significant effect of participant gender emerged 
such that women scored higher on fantasy (M = 3.86, 
SD = 0.90) than men (M = 3.53, SD = 1.04), F (1, 287) 
= 6.72, p = .010, ηp

2 = .02. There was no main effect 
of letter condition on fantasy, F (2, 287) = 1.08, p = 
.341, ηp

2 = .01. However, a significant interaction be-
tween letter condition and gender emerged, F ( 2, 287) 
= 6.45, p = .002, ηp

2 = .04. Women scored higher on 
fantasy (M = 3.99, SD = .80) than men (M = 3.17, SD 
= 1.18) in the control condition, F (1, 287) = 17.58, 
p < .001, ηp

2 = .06. However, there was no gender dif-
ference in the musician letter condition, F (1, 287) = 
2.19,  p = .140, ηp

2 = .01. (Mwomen = 3.91, SD = .96; 
Mmen = 3.62, SD = .87). There was also no gender dif-
ference in the transman letter condition, F (1, 287) = 
.99, p = .319, ηp

2 = .00 (Mwomen = 3.65, SD = .91; Mmen 
= 3.86, SD = 0.92) (See Figure 2). When broken down 
the other way, analyses show that there was no effect of 
letter condition among women, F (2, 287) = 2.30, p = 
.103, ηp

2 = .02, but there was an effect of letter condi-
tion among men, F (2, 287) = 4.57, p = .011, ηp

2 = .03. 
Follow-up Tukey tests indicate that men in the trans-
man letter condition scored higher on fantasy than 
men in the control condition (p = .003). There was no 
difference in fantasy between men in the control and 
musician letter conditions nor was there a difference 
between the men in the musician letter condition and 
the transman letter condition, (p = .052 and p = .317).
 There was a significant effect of participant gender 
such that women scored higher on empathetic concern 
(M = 4.26, SD = 0.70) than men (M = 3.91, SD = 0.77), 
F (1, 286) = 14.64,  p < .001, ηp

2 = .05. There was no 
main effect of letter condition on empathic concern, F 
(2, 286) = 0.02, p = .976, ηp

2 = .00, nor was there a sig-
nificant interaction, F (2, 286) = .05, p = .951, ηp

2 = .00. 
 A significant effect of participant gender was ob-
served such that women scored higher on personal dis-
tress (M = 2.88, SD = 1.01) than men (M = 2.52, SD = 
0.93), F (1, 287) = 9.58, p = .002, ηp

2 = .03. There was 
no main effect of letter condition on personal distress,   
F (2, 287) = 0.05, p = .952, ηp

2 = .00, nor was there a sig-
nificant interaction, F (2, 287) = 1.84, p = .160, ηp

2 = .01.
Privilege and Oppression Inventory (POI). A 
significant effect of participant gender emerged such 
that women reported greater awareness of privilege 
and oppression (M = 4.49, SD = .97) than men (M 
= 4.10, SD = 1.16), F (1, 287) = 8.96, p = .003, ηp

2 = 

.03. There was no main effect of letter condition on 
awareness of privilege and oppression, F (2, 287) = 
.41, p = .665,   ηp

2 = .00, nor was there a significant 
interaction, F (2, 287) = .67, p = .511, ηp

2 = .01.
Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. There was no sig-
nificant effect of participant gender on benevolent 
sexism, F (1, 287) = 1.98, p = .161, ηp

2 = .01. There 
was no main effect of letter condition on benevolent 
sexism, F (2, 287) = 1.84, p = .161, ηp

2 = .01. However, 
a significant interaction between letter condition and 
gender emerged, F (2, 287) = 3.80, p = .023, ηp

2 = .03. 
Men scored higher on benevolent sexism (M = 3.60, 
SD = .95) than women (M = 3.07, SD = 1.09) in the 
control condition, F (1, 287) = 6.30, p = .013, ηp

2 = 
.02. There was no gender difference in the musician 
letter condition, F (1, 287) = 1.75, p = .187, ηp

2 = .01 
(Mwomen = 3.35, SD = 1.10; Mmen = 3.06, SD = 0.90), 
nor in the transman letter condition, F (1, 287) = 1.63, 
p = .203, ηp

2 = .01 (Mwomen = 3.37, SD = 1.00; Mmen = 
3.66, SD = 0.91) (See figure 3). When broken down 
the other way, analyses show that there was no effect of 
letter condition among women, F (2, 287) = 1.72, p = 
.181, ηp

2 = .01, but there was an effect of letter condi-
tion among men, F (2, 287) = 3.30, p = .038, ηp

2 = .02. 
Follow-up Tukey tests indicate that men in the musi-
cian letter condition scored lower on benevolent sex-
ism than both men in the control condition (p = .030) 
and men in the transman letter condition (p = .023). 
There was no difference between men in the control 
condition and the transman letter conditions, p = .836.
 A significant effect of participant gender emerged 
such that men reported more hostile sexism (M = 
3.32, SD = .91) than women (M = 2.82, SD = .97), 
F (1, 285) = 17.75, p < .001, ηp

2 = .06. There was no 
main effect of letter condition on hostile sexism, F (2, 
285) = .20, p = .822, ηp

2=.00, nor was there a signifi-
cant interaction, F (2, 285) = .07, p = .933, ηp

2 = .00. 
System Justification. A significant effect of partic-
ipant gender emerged such that men reported more 
support for the status quo (M = 4.06, SD = 1.67) than 
women (M = 3.5, SD = 1.58), F (1, 286) = 7.86, 
p = .005, ηp

2 = .03. There was no main effect of let-
ter condition on system justification, F (2, 286) = 
2.72, p = .067, ηp

2 = .02, nor was there a significant 
interaction, F (2, 286) = 2.19, p = .114, ηp

2 = .02.
Need for Closure. A significant effect of participant 
gender emerged such that women reported more need 
for closure (M = 4.13, SD = .82) than men (M = 3.92, SD



136

= .79), F (1, 287) = 4.12, p = .043, ηp
2 = .01. There was no 

main effect of letter condition on the need for closure, 
F (2, 287) = .72, p = .490, ηp

2 = .01, nor was there a sig-
nificant interaction, F (2, 287) = .37, p = .690, ηp

2 = .00.
Reactions to Coming Out. A significant effect of 
participant gender emerged such that women report-
ed more positive reactions to how parents should re-
act to their kids coming out (M = 5.75, SD = 1.17) 
than men (M = 5.18, SD = 1.33), F (1, 283) = 13.06, 
p < .001, ηp

2 = .04. There was a significant main effect 
of letter condition, F (2, 283) = 4.93, p = .008, ηp

2 = 
.03.  Follow-up Tukey tests indicate that participants 
in the transman letter condition reported more posi-
tive reactions to how parents should react to their kids 
coming out (M = 5.77, SD = 1.43) than participants 
in the control condition (M = 5.29, SD = 1.32) (p = 
.019). There was no difference between participants in 
the control condition and the musician letter condi-
tion (M = 5.63, SD = 0.95) nor was there a difference 
between participants in the transman letter condition 
and the musician letter condition (p = .121 and p = 
.694 respectively). There was no significant interac-
tion, F (2, 283) = 1.61, p = .201, ηp

2 = .01.
 A significant effect of participant gender emerged 
such that women reported more positive reactions to 
how they would react to their kids coming out (M = 
5.83, SD = 1.28) than men (M = 5.20, SD = 1.40), F 
(1, 283) = 13.46, p < .001, ηp

2 = .05. There was no main 
effect of letter condition, F (2, 283) = 2.22, p = .111, 
ηp

2 = .02. However, a significant interaction between 
letter condition and gender emerged, F (2, 283) = 3.09, 
p = .047, ηp

2 = .02. Women scored higher on positive 
reactions to how they would react to coming out (M 
= 5.85, SD = 1.20) than men (M = 4.72, SD = 1.46) 
in the control condition, F (1, 283) = 16.55, p < .001, 
ηp

2 = .06. However, there was no gender difference in 
the musician letter condition, F (1, 283) = 3.66, p = 
.057, ηp

2 = .01 (Mwomen = 5.92, SD = .95; Mmen = 5.38, 
SD = 1.22). There was also no gender difference in the 
transman letter condition, F (1, 283) = .22, p = .641, 
ηp

2 = .00 (Mwomen = 5.70, SD = 1.65; Mmen = 5.57, SD 
= 1.39) (See Figure 4). When broken down the oth-
er way, analyses show that there was no effect of letter 
condition among women, F (2, 283) = .45, p = .638, ηp

2 
= .00, but there was an effect of letter condition among 
men, F (2, 283) = 3.85, p = .022, ηp

2 = .03. Follow-up 
Tukey tests indicate that men in the transman letter 
condition and men in the musician letter condition 

scored higher on positive reactions than men in the 
control condition (p = .010 and p = .039 respectively). 
There was no difference between men in the transman 
and musician letter conditions, p = .582.

Discussion
 The current study extends past research by fur-
ther testing how efficacious a brief humanizing inter-
vention is in reducing transphobia. In contrast to our 
hypothesis, we did not see a main effect of our manip-
ulation on most of our dependent variables. The only 
dependent variable that was significantly affected by 
our manipulation was how participants reported par-
ents should respond to their children coming out as 
transgender. Specifically, participants in the transman 
letter condition reported more positive responses on 
how parents should react to their child coming out 
than participants in the control condition. This posi-
tive influence could be caused by the explicitness of the 
transman letter condition in describing a transgender 
man’s journey of self-discovery and the importance 
of having his parents support him. In turn, this could 
have motivated participants to acknowledge the ideal 
way in which a parent should react to their kid coming 
out. However, this manipulation may have not shifted 
participants’ intrinsic beliefs about how they should 
act if their own child came out to them (Reiss, 2012). 
Additionally, the effectiveness of the manipulation 
may have not been extended to the other dependent 
variables because they were numerous. Although the 
questionnaire did include some filler questions, there 
was an abundance of transphobia questions which 
may have signaled to participants the true purpose of 
this study, thus leading to relatively low transphobia 
regardless of condition. Future research could decrease 
the number of prejudice-related items and add more 
filler questions which would lessen the likelihood of the 
participants figuring out the true purpose of the study. 
 Our exploratory hypothesis which expected differ 
ences between the musician letter condition and both 
the control condition and the transman letter condi-
tion was not supported. The musician’s letter did not 
explicitly mention transgender issues in any way. Al-
though it did highlight a difficult time that the charac-
ter was going through, it did not describe the specific 
hardships that transgender individuals face when com-
ing out to their parents.This piece could have been in-
tegral to triggering empathy towards transgender indi-

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



137

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

viduals. Thus, in this case, general empathy did not in-
stigate a decrease in transphobia. In turn, the musician 
letter condition did not show the decrease in transpho-
bic attitudes that was hypothesized to occur in com-
parison to the control condition. 
 As expected, men exhibited higher levels of trans-
phobia, hostile sexism, and system justification than 
women. In addition, women exhibited higher aware-
ness of privilege and oppression and more need for clo-
sure in comparison to men. Women also scored higher 
than men on all facets of the Interpersonal Reactivity 
Index including perspective-taking, fantasy, empathy, 
and personal distress. Women had warmer feelings to-
wards transgender men and transgender women than 
men. In contrast to men, women reported more posi-
tive reactions to how parents should react to their kid 
coming out as well as how they would react to their 
kid coming out. These results are in alignment with 
our hypothesis and previous literature (Tompkins et 
al., 2015; Tebbe & Moradi, 2012; Glick & Fiske, 1996) 
that men would have more negative responses across 
all dependent variables than women. These findings 
are consistent with the fact that men tend to hold more 
power in society compared to other gender identities, 
benefit from maintaining the status quo, and therefore 
feel more threatened by non-normative experiences 
(West & Borras-Guevara, 2021). However, there was 
no gender difference between men and women when 
it came to feelings towards non-binary individuals, 
attitudes towards transgender individuals, and inclu-
sion of others in self. The lack of difference in feelings 
towards non-binary individuals might be due to a 
lack of awareness, interaction, and knowledge about 
non-binary folk (Fiani & Serpe, 2020). Additionally, 
participants may have had a difficult time with answer-
ing the inclusion of others in the self scale as it asks 
them to rate how close they are to transgender indi-
viduals without clarifying what closeness refers to. Par-
ticipants could have thought that this question asked 
them to signify how close they feel to the transgender 
identity, or how closely they feel towards transgender 
people. The attitudes towards transgender individuals 
scale might have not triggered a gender difference be-
cause it was the second scale measuring transphobia 
within the survey. Thus, perhaps some participants 
were made aware of the true purpose behind the study, 
making them concerned about social desirability. 
 No interaction between participant gender and 

letter condition was obtained on transphobia, atti-
tudes towards transgender individuals, feelings to-
wards transgender individuals, inclusion of self, em-
pathetic concern and personal distress, hostile sexism, 
system justification, need for closure, or how parents 
should react to their kid coming out. In contrast, a 
significant interaction between participant gender and 
letter condition emerged on the perspective-taking 
subscale of the IRI which measures the tendency to 
imagine oneself in another person’s situation and see 
things from their perspective. Women reported higher 
perspective-taking than men in both the control con-
dition and the musician letter condition but not in 
the transman letter condition. This suggests that the 
transman letter condition affected perspective-taking 
such that it eliminated the standard gender differenc-
es obtained in the control condition and the musician 
letter condition. The transman letter condition explic-
itly explains how difficult it had been for the trans-
gender man to go through life without being seen as a 
man. Male participants may have related to that feeling 
which encouraged them to put themselves in another 
person’s shoes. Furthermore, there was a significant 
interaction on the fantasy subscale of the IRI which 
measures people’s tendency to imagine themselves in 
fictional situations. Women scored higher than men 
in the control condition but there was no difference 
in the other two conditions. This finding suggests that 
both the musician and transman letter conditions are 
able to affect the gendered differences between men 
and women and their ability to imagine themselves in 
a situation they would usually not be in. The vulner-
ability present in both these letters may have encour-
aged men to step into a fictional situation. In addition, 
an interaction between participant gender and letter 
condition emerged on how participants would react to 
their kids coming out. Women reported more positive 
reactions in the control condition than men, but there 
was no gender difference in the other two conditions. 
This finding again suggests that the musician letter and 
the transman letter conditions eliminate the gender 
differences obtained in the control condition. Both the 
musician and transman letters showcased vulnerable 
experiences which may have influenced participants to 
take into consideration the characters’ hardships and
eliminated typically seen gender differences in would 
reactions to coming out. A similar interaction was also 
obtained on benevolent sexism, which is a subter form



138

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY

of sexism expressed in a seemingly positive light, there 
is an interaction between gender and letter condition. 
Men scored higher on benevolent sexism in the con-
trol condition than women but there was no gender 
difference in the musician letter condition and the 
transgender letter condition. The results suggest 
that the levels of benevolent sexism decrease in men 
when subjected to reading a letter. Both letter con-
ditions highlighted the vulnerability of two young 
men during a hard time in their lives which could 
have consequently decreased men’s benevolent sex-
ism scores. Since both letters showcased the struggle 
of two men, they may have led male participants to be 
less likely to endorse traditional gendered beliefs that 
are seemingly positive towards women (Manzi, 2019).
 Overall, the current work has a number of 
strengths. Firstly, it is important to test the efficacy 
of brief humanizing interventions with the presence 
of an independent control condition. The control 
condition acts as a reference to the other two condi-
tions and is essential to get an understanding of the 
true effect of interventions like reading a coming-out 
letter on transphobia outside of studies with set pre-
and post-tests. Previous literature (Tompkins et al., 
2015; Case & Stewart, 2013; Mizock et al., 2017), uses 
pre-tests that tells participants something about the 
purpose of the study and increases social desirability 
bias. This study did not have a pretest condition, thus 
reducing the likelihood that participants are aware of 
the purpose of the study before experiencing the ma-
nipulation, and thus motivated to answer questions 
in a particular manner that is desirable to researchers. 
Moreover, an appropriately large sample size (N=302) 
was determined by running a priori power analysis 
and recruitment. This study was able to obtain a larger 
and more diverse sample than prior research by using 
MTurk recruitment. In comparison to previous stud-
ies (Walch et al., 2012; Tompkins et al., 2015), which 
utilized students as their participants, our participants 
had more varied life experiences. The mean age of 
our participants was approximately 35 and 37.1% of 
our participants had completed some level of college, 
30.8% had various educational levels, and 14.9 % had a 
Master’s degree. Our sample reported relatively mod-
erate political views ranging from conservative (26.2%) 
to moderate (37.8%) to liberal (56%). Previous liter-
ature used undergraduate samples (Tompkins et al., 
2015; Case & Stewart, 2013; Walch et al., 2012), which 

typically skew more liberal politically (Campbell & 
Horowitz, 2015). Thus, this study offers a more po-
litically diverse participant sample. Another strength 
of our current work was our manipulation check data, 
which showed that participants were generally atten-
tive and understood their respective letter conditions.
 Although the current study had a number of im-
portant strengths, there are also weaknesses that can be 
addressed in future research. The current sample was 
not racially diverse. 65.2% of our participants identi-
fied as White/Caucasian. Previous research (Case & 
Stewart, 2013) has demonstrated higher rates of trans-
phobia in people of color prior to interventions.  Thus, 
future research may explore the interaction of racial 
identity with humanizing interventions intended to 
reduce transphobia. Future studies may find that hu-
manizing interventions have a greater effect on people 
of color who previously had higher rates of transpho-
bia. Cisgender men have previously had higher levels 
of transphobia than cisgender women. Humaniz-
ing interventions were able to eliminate some of the 
gendered differences between them (Hodson, 2011). 
Thus, a similar effect may occur with participant race. 
Also, the vast majority (97.1%) of our participants 
identified as either men or women; there were few 
non-cisgender and non-binary participants. Further 
research may attempt to recruit a more gender-diverse 
participant population and study potential internal-
ized transphobia. Internalized transphobia is when 
transgender individuals internalize the negative out-
look and normative gender attitudes that society has 
put in place (Scandurra et al., 2018). Future research 
could look into the effect of humanizing interventions 
on internalized transphobia and whether empathy 
can decrease internalized transphobia. Transgender 
individuals might empathize with the representations 
in humanizing interventions and see that their own 
struggles are valid. This empathy might extend to 
themselves thus decreasing their internalized trans- 
phobia. Additionally, future studies could explore the 
efficacy of a humanizing intervention by comparing 
the effect of letters written by people of different gen-
der identities: transgender women, transgender men, 
and non-binary individuals. Participants may have dif-
ferent preconceived biases towards people with these 
gender identities and the humanizing interven tion 
could affect participants differently depending on 
what condition they are exposed to. Although there



139

is not much research on whether attitudes towards 
transmen, transwomen, and gender non-binary peo-
ple differ, there is good reason to expect their lived ex-
periences to be different, as transgender women have 
been subjected to higher rates of gender-based violence 
(Gyamerah et al., 2021). Additionally, people have less 
awareness of non-binary individuals (Fiani & Serpe, 
2020) which could increase people’s transphobia. Peo-
ple are generally wary of the concepts and things that 
they do not know (Carleton, 2016) which in turn may 
affect people’s attitudes towards non-binary individ-
uals. Humanizing interventions that would include 
these gender identities might elicit greater reductions 
in transphobia levels towards transgender women 
versus transgender men and non-binary individuals 
because of the high rates of violence towards them. 
Moreover, future research could decrease the number 
of dependent variables within the study and add more 
filler questions in order to decrease potential social de-
sirability bias. It would also be beneficial to also look 
at how long the effects of a humanizing intervention 
last through a longitudinal study. Brief humanizing 
interventions might have a temporary effect on peo-
ple’s prejudice towards transgender individuals, espe-
cially if the intervention was only administered once. 
 In sum, this brief humanizing intervention did 
not have the direct impacts on transphobia that were 
initially predicted. Unlike prior research which found 
more support for the effectiveness of brief humanizing 
interventions, this study included the general popula-
tion instead of university students. Additionally, this 
study reduced participant suspicion by implementing 
a control condition. Thus, our findings suggest that 
prior research may have painted a rosier picture of the 
ease with which humanizing interventions can reduce 
transphobia. However, our findings still suggest that 
humanizing interventions may have promising ef-
fects. For example, we found that our manipulation 
influenced participants’ outlook on how they think 
parents should react to their kid coming out to them, 
signifying that participants believed parents should re-
act in less transphobic ways to their kid coming out. 
Thus, future research using humanizing interventions 
is needed to better understand the extent to which 
they can be effective in reducing transphobia and im-
proving the livelihoods of transgender individuals.

References
Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). Inclu-

sion of other in the self scale and the structure 
of interpersonal closeness. Journal of Personality 
and Social Psychology, 63(4), 596-612. https://doi.
org/10.1037/0022-3514.63.4.596

Allport, F. H. (1954). The structuring of events: out-
line of a general theory with applications to psy-
chology. Psychological Review, 61(5), 281–303. 
https://doi.org/10.1037/h0062678

Allport, G. W. & Lindzey, G. (1954). Handbook of so-
cial psychology. Addison-Wesley.

Boccanfuso, E., White, F. A., & Maunder, R. D. (2020). 
Reducing transgender stigma via an E-contact in-
tervention. Sex Roles, 84(5-6), 326–336. https://
doi.org/10.1007/s11199-020-01171-9

Borras Guevara, M. L., & West, K. (2021). Masculinity 
threat: Understanding why Jamaican men report 
more anti-gay prejudice than Jamaican wom-
en. Journal of Gender Studies, 30(3), 292–305. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2020.184217
8

Brown, M. L., & Rounsley, C. A. (1996). True selves: 
Understanding transsexualism—For families, 
friends, coworkers, and helping professionals. San 
Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Buhrmester, M., Kwang, T., & Gosling, S. D. (2011). 
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk: A new source of 
inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspectives 
on Psychological Science, 6(1), 3–5. https://doi.
org/10.1177/1745691610393980

Campbell, C., & Horowitz, J. (2015). Does col-
lege influence sociopolitical attitudes? Sociol-
ogy of Education, 89(1), 40–58. https://doi.
org/10.1177/0038040715617224

Carleton, R.N., (2016). Fear of the unknown: One 
fear to rule them all? Journal of Anxiety Disor-
ders, 41, 5-21, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janx-
dis.2016.03.011.

Case, K. A., Stewart, B. (2013). Intervention effec 
tiveness in reducing prejudice against transsex-
uals. Journal of LGBT Youth, 10(1-2), 140–158. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2012.718549

Chan, J. Y. N., Mak, W. W. S., & Law, L. S. C. (2009). 
Combining education and video-based contact to 
reduce stigma of mental illness: “The same or not 
the same” anti-stigma program for secondary sch-

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS



140

ools in Hong Kong. Social Science & Medicine, 
68, 1521–1526. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.
socscimed.2009.02.016

Crowne, D.P., and Marlowe, D., (1960). A new scale 
of social desirability independent of psychopa-
thology. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24(4), 
349–54. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0047358. 

Davis, M. H. (1980). A multidimensional approach to 
individual differences in empathy. JSAS Catalog of 
Selected Documents in Psychology, 10, 85.

Faul, F., Erdfelder, E., Buchner, A., & Lang, A. G. 
(2009). Statistical power analyses using G*Power 
3.1: tests for correlation and regression analyses. 
Behavior Research Methods, 41(4), 1149–1160. 
https://doi.org/10.3758/BRM.41.4.1149

Fiani, C. N. (2020). Non-Binary identity and the dou-
ble-edged sword of globalization. In C. R. Serpe 
(Ed.), Trans Lives in a Globalizing World (pp. 
16–23). Routledge. 

Glick, P. & Fiske, S.T. (1996). The Ambivalent Sex-
ism Inventory: Differentiating hostile and be-
nevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and So-
cial Psychology, 70(3), 491-512. https://dx.doi.
org/10.1037/0022-3514.70.3.491

Grossman, A. H., D’Augelli, A. R. (2010). Transgen-
der youth and life-threatening behaviors. Suicide 
and Life-Threatening Behavior, 37(5), 527–537. 
https://doi.org/10.1521/suli.2007.37.5.527 

Gyamerah, A. O., Baguso, G., Santiago-Rodriguez, 
E., Sa’id, A., Arayasirikul, S., Lin, J., Turner, C. 
M., Taylor, K. D., McFarland, W., Wilson, E. C., 
& Wesson, P. (2021). Experiences and factors as-
sociated with transphobic hate crimes among 
transgender women in the San Francisco Bay 
Area: Comparisons across race. BioMed Central 
Public Health, 21(1), 1053-1067. https://doi.
org/10.1186/s12889-021-11107-x

Hays, Danica G., Chang, Catherine Y., & Decker, Scott 
L. (2007). Initial development and psychometric 
data for the Privilege and Oppression Inventory. 
Measurement and Evaluation in Counseling and 
Development, 40(2), 66-79. https://dx.doi.org/10
.1080/07481756.2007.11909806

Hendricks, M. L., & Testa, R. J. (2012). A conceptual 
framework for clinical work with transgender and 
gender nonconforming clients: An adaptation of 
the Minority Stress Model. Professional Psycholo-
gy: Research and Practice, 43(5), 460–467. https://

doi.org/10.1037/a0029597
Hodson, G., Choma, B. L., & Costello, K. (2009). 

Experiencing alien-nation: Effects of a simula-
tion intervention on attitudes toward homo-
sexuals. Journal of Experimental Social Psychol-
ogy, 45(4), 974–978. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
jesp.2009.02.010

Hodson, G. (2011). Do ideologically intolerant peo-
ple benefit from intergroup contact? Current Di-
rections in Psychological Science, 20(3), 154–159. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721411409025

Hughto, J. M., Reisner, S. L., & Pachankis, J. E. 
(2015). Transgender stigma and health: A crit-
ical review of stigma determinants, mecha-
nisms, and interventions. Social Science & Med-
icine, 147, 222–231. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
socscimed.2015.11.010  

Kay, A.C., & Jost, J.T. (2003). Complementary justice: 
Effects of “Poor but Happy” and “Poor but Hon-
est” stereotype exemplars on system justification 
and implicit activation of the justice motive. Journal 
of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(5), 823-837. 
https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/00223514.85.5.823

Manzi, F. (2019). Are the processes underlying dis-
crimination the same for women and men? A crit-
ical review of congruity models of gender discrim-
ination. Frontiers in Psychology, 10, e469. https://
doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00469     

McDowell, M. J., Goldhammer, H., Potter, J. E., & 
Keuroghlian, A. S. (2020). Strategies to mitigate 
clinician implicit bias against sexual and gender 
minority patients. Psychosomatics, 61(6), 655–661. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psym.2020.04.021 

McLemore, K. A. (2018). A minority stress perspec-
tive on transgender individuals’ experiences with 
misgendering. Stigma and Health, 3(1), 53–64. 
https://doi.org/10.1037/sah0000070 

Meyer I. H. (2003). Prejudice, social stress, and mental 
health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: 
conceptual issues and research evidence. Psycho-
logical Bulletin, 129(5), 674–697. https://doi.
org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.674 

Mizock, L., Hopwood, R., Casey, H., Duhamel, E., 
Herrick, A., Puerto, G., & Stelmach, J. (2017). 
The transgender awareness webinar: Reducing 
transphobia among undergraduates and mental 
health providers. Journal of Gay & Lesbian Men-
tal Health, 21(4), 292–315. https://doi.org/10.10

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



141

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

80/19359705.2017.1320696 
Morizot, Julien. (2014). Construct validity of adoles-

cents’ self-reported big five personality traits: Im-
portance of conceptual breadth and initial valida-
tion of a short measure.  Assessment, 21(5), 580-606. 
https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1073191114524015

Moss-Racusin, C. A., & Rabasco, H. (2018). Reduc-
ing gender identity bias through imagined inter-
group contact. Journal of Applied Social Psychol-
ogy, 48(8), 457–474. https://doi.org/10.1111/
jasp.12525 

Murphy, A. O., Sutton, R. M., Douglas, K. M., & Mc-
Clellan, L. M. (2011). Ambivalent sexism and the 
“do”s and “don’t”s of pregnancy: Examining atti-
tudes toward proscriptions and the women who 
flout them. Personality and Individual Differenc-
es, 51(7), 812-816. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.
paid.2011.06.031

Nagoshi, Julie L., Adams, Katherine A., Terrell, Heath-
er K., Hill, Eric D., Brzuzy, Stephanie, & Nagoshi, 
Craig T.(2008). Gender differences in correlates 
of homophobia and transphobia. Sex Roles, 59(7-
8), 521-531. https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11199-
008-9458-7

National Center for Transgender Equality. (2016, July 
9). Frequently asked questions about transgender 
people. https://transequality.org/issues/resourc-
es/frequently-asked-questions-about-transgen-
der-people 

National LGBTQ Task Force. (2022). Transgender work-
ers at greater risk for unemployment and poverty. 
https://www.thetaskforce.org/transgender-work-
ers-at-greater-risk-for-unemployment-and-poverty/ 

Neuberg, Steven L., Judice, T. Nicole, & West, Stephen 
G. (1997). What the Need for Closure Scale mea-
sures and what it does not: Toward differentiating 
among related epistemic motives. Journal of Per-
sonality and Social Psychology, 72(6), 1396-1412. 
https://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.72.6.1396

Pellicane, M. J., & Ciesla, J. A. (2022). Associations 
between minority stress, depression, and sui-
cidal ideation and attempts in transgender and 
gender diverse (TGD) individuals: Systematic 
review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology 
Review, 91, 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
cpr.2021.102113

Reiss, S. (2012). Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. 
Teaching of Psychology, 39(2), 152–156. https://

doi.org/10.1177/0098628312437704
Scandurra, C., Bochicchio, V., Amodeo, A. L., Esposi-

to, C., Valerio, P., Maldonato, N. M., Bacchini, 
D., & Vitelli, R. (2018). Internalized transphobia, 
resilience, and mental health: Applying the psy-
chological mediation framework to Italian trans-
gender individuals. International Journal of En-
vironmental Research and Public Health, 15(3), 
508. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15030508

Tebbe, E. N., Moradi, B. (2012). Anti-transgender 
prejudice: A structural equation model of asso-
ciated constructs. Journal of Counseling Psychol-
ogy, 59(2), 251–261. https://doi.org/10.1037/
a0026990 

The Trevor Project. (2022). 2022 National Survey on 
LGBTQ Youth Mental Health. https://www.thet-
revorproject.org/survey-2022/#intro 

Tompkins, T. L., Shields, C. N., Hillman, K. M., & 
White, K. (2015). Reducing stigma toward the 
transgender community: An evaluation of a hu-
manizing and perspective-taking intervention. 
Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Di-
versity, 2(1), 34–42. https://doi.org/10.1037/
sgd0000088 

UCLA School of Law Williams Institute. (2021, 
March 23). Transgender people over four times 
more likely than cisgender people to be victims of 
violent crime. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.
edu/press/ncvs-trans-press-release/ 

Walch, S. E., Sinkkanen, K. A., Swain, E. M., Francisco, 
J., Breaux, C. A., & Sjoberg, M. D. (2012). Using 
intergroup contact theory to reduce stigma against 
transgender individuals: Impact of a transgender 
speaker panel presentation. Journal of Applied So-
cial Psychology, 42(10), 2583–2605. https://doi.
org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2012.00955.x

West, K. & Borras-Guevara, M.L. (2022). When cis-
gender, heterosexual men feel attracted to trans-
gender women: Sexuality-norm violations lead to 
compensatory anti-gay prejudice, Journal of Ho-
mosexuality, 69(3), 2267-2285. https://doi.org10
.1080/00918369.2021.1938467

Whitford, D. K., & Emerson, A. M. (2018). Empathy 
intervention to reduce implicit bias in pre-service-
teachers. Psychological Reports, 122(2), 670–688. 
https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294118767435

Wren B. (2002). ‘I can accept my child is transsexual but 
if I ever see him in a dress I’ll hit him’: Dilemmas 



142142

in parenting a transgendered adolescent. Clinical 
Child Psychology and Psychiatry;7(3), -377-397. 
https://doi.org10.1177/1359104502007003006

 

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



143

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

Table 1

Demographics of Participants



144

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



145

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

Table 2

The Distribution of Male and Female Participants in Each Condition



146

Figure 1

The Effect of Gender and Letter Condition on IRI-Perspective-Taking 

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



147

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

Figure 2

The Effect of Gender and Letter Condition on IRI-Fantasy 



148

Figure 3

The Effect of Gender and Letter Condition on Ambivalent Sexism

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



149

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

Figure 4

The Effect of Gender and Letter Condition on Would Reactions 



150

Appendix A

Musician Letter

Dear Mom and Dad,  
  
 I have something very important to tell you about myself. You might not approve of it, but 
please try to keep an open mind as I try to explain this. Also, please understand that what I’m about to 
tell you is not your fault. So whatever you do, please don’t blame yourselves.  
 I know you’ve wondered why I’ve never had a girlfriend. You might have noticed that I spend 
most of my time with my “buddies.” Well, I’m not slacking off, but I have actually been in a band. You 
see, my current major doesn’t match the way I see myself. Mom and Dad, I feel that I am a musician. 
You might not see this for me, but I know I am a musician. It’s what comes naturally to me. I have felt 
this way for as long as I can remember. I know you thought I was just messing around with my guitar, 
but it went much deeper than that.
 At the age of four, I remember thinking that I was a rockstar. Then, I learned that musicians 
make music for a living. So I waited for the opportunity to pursue music. Obviously, it never came.  So 
every night, I asked God to please let me become a musician. It hasn’t happened yet. 
 Up until age twelve, things were just OK. I had some really good times with my buddies, but 
I was very sad and lonely knowing that I would soon have to give this all up to go to college. Then in  
high school, things got a lot worse. There were so many things I wanted to do but couldn’t. There were 
band practices that I had to miss, but I had to keep my feelings locked up inside. I always had to pre-
tend to be someone I wasn’t. I couldn’t just be myself. You have no idea how hard it was for me to try 
to act like I wanted to become a doctor. It was extremely  difficult for me! To this day, it really tears me 
up inside! For the longest time, I had been deeply unhappy with my major- the life plan I am supposed 
to want. But no matter what I did or how hard I worked, I could never feel passionate about medicine. 
At one time, I felt so unhappy that I had to call an emergency hotline because I didn’t know what else 
to do. 
 Every day is a struggle for me because I know I have to play a role I’m not comfortable in. It 
stresses me out so much! I’m sick and tired of the whole charade! At school, I present a cheerful image 
So they expect me to be all dedicated to my academic journey and happy. They’re used to seeing me 
with a smile on my face all the time. If only they knew the pain and torture I’m going through!
 Well, Mom and Dad, what I’m trying to say is that I am going to quit college and start my mu-
sic career. Now, you don’t have to understand me, but please try to accept me. I can’t be who you want 
me to be. I’ve got to do what I know is right for me—not what anyone else might think is right. Your 
support during this chapter of my life would mean the world to me.  
 Mom and Dad, you’ve been so good to me. I just want to thank you for all you’ve done for me. 
I feel truly blessed to have parents like you. I love you. Please don’t ever forget that, no matter what.

 With love,
 Adam 

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY



151

INTERVENTION ON PREJUDICE TOWARDS TRANSGENDER INDIVIDUALS

Appendix B

                                                                                         Transgender Letter 
Edited from Case, K. A., Stewart, B. (2013)

Dear Mom and Dad,  

 I have something very important to tell you about myself. You might not approve of it, 
but please try to keep an open mind as I try to explain this. Also, please understand that what I’m 
about to tell you is not your fault. So whatever you do, please don’t blame yourselves.  
 I know you’ve wondered why I never had a boyfriend. You might have noticed that all of 
my guy friends are more like my “buddies.” Well, I’m not a lesbian, but I am very much attracted 
to women. You see, my body doesn’t match the way I see myself. Mom and Dad, I feel that I am 
a man. My body might tell you the opposite, but I know I am a man. It’s what comes naturally to 
me. I have felt this way for as long as I can remember. I know you thought I was just a tomboy, but 
it went much deeper than that.     
 At the age of four, I remember thinking that I was a boy. Then I learned that boys have a 
penis. So I waited for mine to grow. Obviously, it never did. So every night, I asked God to please 
change my body into a male body. It hasn’t happened yet.    
 Up until age twelve, things were just OK. I had some really good times with my buddies, 
but I was still very sad and lonely. Then in high school, things got a lot worse. There were so many 
things I wanted to do but couldn’t. There were girls that I really liked and cared about, but I had to 
keep my feelings locked up deep inside. I always had to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. I couldn’t 
just be myself. You have no idea how hard it was for me to try to act like a girl. It was extremely 
humiliating for me! To this day, it really tears me up inside! For the longest time, I had been deep-
ly unhappy with the body I am in- the body I am supposed to feel comfortable in. But no matter 
what I did or how hard I worked out, I could never feel at home in my own skin. At one time, I 
felt so unhappy that I had to call an emergency hotline because I didn’t know what else to do.   
 Every day is a struggle for me because I know I have to play a role I’m not comfortable in. 
It stresses me out so much! I’m sick and tired of the whole charade! At work, I present a cheerful 
image. So they expect me to be all feminine and happy. They’re used to seeing me with a smile on 
my face all the time. If only they knew the pain and torture I’m going through!
 Well, Mom and Dad, what I’m trying to say is that I am going to begin my gender tran-
sition into the body that I truly feel comfortable in. Now, you don’t have to understand me, but 
please try to accept me. I can’t be who you want me to be. I’ve got to do what I know is right for 
me—not what anyone else might think is right.Your support during this chapter of my life would 
mean the world to me. 
 Mom and Dad, you’ve been so good to me. I just want to thank you for all you’ve done for 
me. I feel truly blessed to have parents like you. I love you. Please don’t ever forget that, no matter 
what.

 With love, 
 Alice (soon to be known as Adam) 



152

Appendix C

Reactions to Coming Out  
(Using data from Wren, 2002)

Rate the following statements according to your degree of agreement or disagreement using a 7-point 
scale ranging from 1= strongly disagree to 7 strongly agree

Adam’s parents should…
     - Support Adam completely- even if they do not understand him
   - Tell Adam that he is not mature enough to make such major decisions
   - Take Adam to see a specialist and change his mind 
   - Get the proper professional help to support Adam and his decisions
   - Accept Adam
 
If you were Adam’s parent, you would…
   - Support Adam completely- even if you do not understand him
   - Tell Adam that he is not mature enough to make such major decisions
   - Take Adam to see a specialist and change his mind 
   - Get the proper professional help to support Adam and his decisions 
    - Accept Adam

 

TOUMA SAWAYA & McCARTY


