Gay-related rejection sensitivity (Pachankis)
An anxious readiness to expect rejection because of one’s sexual orientation, to see it quickly and to react strongly. It builds on Downey’s general rejection sensitivity and is tied to situations where sexuality could matter: meeting new people, a new team, family events. It was first measured in gay men, and later studies included lesbians.
What drives it
Past rejection, often from parents, teaches a person to brace for more, and the bracing shapes what they see: a pause reads as disgust, a missed invitation as exclusion. To avoid the expected blow they may hold back, agree too fast or leave first. For identification it explains why someone who has met little rejection as an adult can still feel braced for it.
How it shows
Work
Reading a manager’s short email as a reaction to having mentioned a husband. Going silent in meetings after coming out to the team. Not applying for a post in a conservative branch office.
Relationships
Leaving a straight friend’s wedding early, sure that people were staring. Letting a new acquaintance’s assumptions stand. Pulling back from a new partner’s family before they have done anything.
Self
Notice how fast you decide someone is uncomfortable with you, what you base it on, and what you do next.
What tells it apart
Rejection sensitivity: General rejection sensitivity expects rejection in close relationships for any reason. The gay-related form is more likely when the bracing switches on with sexuality and is absent where orientation doesn’t come up.
Social anxiety: Social anxiety fears looking foolish or incompetent. Gay-related rejection sensitivity fears rejection for who one is. Feinstein’s data link it with social anxiety symptoms, so the two may run together.
Hypervigilance: Hypervigilance after trauma scans for physical danger everywhere. Gay-related rejection sensitivity scans for social rejection in particular settings, though after anti-gay violence the two can merge.
A test
Ask the person to recall a recent moment they felt rejected for being gay, lesbian or bi, and what the other person did. If the evidence was thin, the reaction strong and the pattern frequent, gay-related rejection sensitivity may be at work. Some rejections are real, so the test is about how often and how fast.
Questions to carry
- What did the other person do just before I felt rejected?
- Whose rejection taught me to brace like this?
Go deeper
- Study: Prejudice, social stress, and mental health in lesbian, gay, and bisexual populations: Conceptual issues and research evidence, Ilan H. Meyer, Psychological Bulletin, 2003. The paper that set out minority stress. Using meta-analyses of earlier studies, Meyer found higher rates of mental disorders among lesbian, gay and bisexual people than among heterosexual people. He explained the gap by stress from stigma: prejudice events, expecting rejection, hiding, and internalized homophobia, with coping that softens some of it. It is a review and a model, and later studies tested its parts. It covers lesbian, gay and bisexual people. Hendricks and Testa adapted it for trans people in 2012. The full text is free to read.
How strong the research is
moderate. Pachankis, Goldfried and Ramrattan (Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2008) built a scale of gay-related rejection sensitivity for gay men. Parental rejection of a son’s orientation predicted it through internalized homophobia, and it predicted unassertive behavior with others over and above those two. In 218 lesbians and 249 gay men (Feinstein, Goldfried and Davila, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2012), rejection sensitivity and internalized homonegativity both helped explain the link between experiences of discrimination and symptoms of depression and social anxiety, with some links stronger in gay men. Both studies rest on self-report surveys, and the direction of effects is modeled from them.
Where it comes from
Downey and Feldman, ‘Implications of rejection sensitivity for intimate relationships’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1996. John Pachankis, Marvin Goldfried and Ramrattan, ‘Extension of the rejection sensitivity construct to the interpersonal functioning of gay men’, Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2008
On the family tree: John Pachankis