Can community consciousness be a bad thing? A moderated mediation analysis of heterosexism, mental health and body appreciation in sexual minority men

Abstract

This study examined the connections between heterosexism, mental health, body appreciation and community consciousness in sexual minority men (SMM). Participants (n = 89) completed a national online survey. Simultaneous multiple regressions found that heterosexism explained 9.4% of the variance in body appreciation and 25.8% of the variance in mental health; mental health accounted for 28.0% of the variance in body appreciation. Within these models, harassment/rejection heterosexism was a unique positive predictor of mental health problems and a unique negative predictor of body appreciation; depression was a unique negative predictor of body appreciation. A moderated mediational model found that depression mediated the relationship between harassment/rejection heterosexism and body appreciation, but only in men who endorsed high community consciousness. Intervention research might benefit from helping SMM explore the ways in which body image is affected by heterosexism and mental health, as well as the ways that contemporary Western gay communities might contribute to these connections.

Keywords: Body satisfaction; community consciousness, USA; heterosexism; mental health; sexual minority men (SMM).

Figure 1

Initial simple mediation model with standardized path loadings and standard errors using 5000 bootstrap samples

Figure 2

The conceptual moderated mediation model.