Implicit Transgender Attitudes Independently Predict Beliefs About Gender and Transgender People

Surprisingly little is known about transgender attitudes, partly due to a need for improved measures of beliefs about transgender people. Four studies introduce a novel Implicit Association Test (IAT) assessing implicit attitudes toward transgender people. Study 1 (N= 294) found significant implicit and explicit preferences for cisgender over transgender people, both of which correlated with transphobia and transgender-related policy support. Study 2 (N= 1,094) found that implicit transgender attitudes predicted similar outcomes among participants reporting no explicit preference for cisgender versus transgender people. Across Study 3a (N= 5,647) and Study 3b (N= 2,276), implicit transgender attitudes predicted multiple outcomes, including gender essentialism, contact with transgender people, and support for transgender-related policies, over and above explicit attitudes. This work introduces a reliable means of measuring implicit transgender attitudes and illustrates how these attitudes independently predict meaningful beliefs and experiences.