Publications by authors named "Chana Etengoff"

Although many sexual and gender minorities (SGMs) consider themselves religious or spiritual, the impact of this religiousness or spirituality (RS) on their health is poorly understood. We introduce the religious/spiritual stress and resilience model (RSSR) to provide a robust framework for understanding the variegated ways that RS influences the health of SGMs. The RSSR bridges existing theorizing on minority stress, structural stigma, and RS-health pathways to articulate the circumstances under which SGMs likely experience RS as health promoting or health damaging.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Despite the psychosocial strain of homonegative religious attitudes, many people with minoritized sexual identities also hold religious identities and benefit from integrating their sexual minority and religious identities. However, for research and clinical practice to advance, a reliable and valid measure of sexual and religious identity integration is needed. The present study reports on the development and validation of the Sexual Minority and Religious Identity Integration (SMRII) Scale.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Drawing on minority stress and intersectionality theories, we examine whether the relationship between religiousness and depression among people with marginalized sexualities changes as a function of their experience of internalized stigma. Analyses of a sample of 260 people with marginalized sexualities suggested that the relationship between religiousness and depression was moderated by internalized homonegativity. Simple slopes analyses revealed that when people with marginalized sexualities reported higher degrees of internalized homonegativity, the relationship between religiousness and depression was positive.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Departing from extant deficit models, the present study qualitatively explored 50 LGBTQ+ college students' development within Greek Life from a Transformative Intersectional Psychology (TIP) approach. Amidst the heteronormative and gendernormative challenges of Greek Life, participants actively pursued an authentic self, friendship, leadership and transformative social change. Sixty-six percent of participants characterized their Greek Life experiences as positive, with 88% of participants reporting that their overall Greek Life engagement positively contributed to their college experience.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This strength-based, mixed-methods study explored how trans individuals utilize transvlogs as a community building and resilience resource. Eighty-six transvlog viewers explained their motivation for viewing transvlogs and additionally rated their self-efficacy and well-being. Narrative analyses indicate that participants viewed transvlogs to gain informational, emotional, and sociorelational resources.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The current exploratory study utilized a mixed-methods design to study 18 lesbian Muslims' mental health in relation to familial and online social support (M Age = 24, Sd = 9). Due to the threat of familial rejection, the majority of participants (n = 11) selectively disclosed their sexual identity and four participants publicly disclosed. Half of participants scored as mildly to severely depressed on the Beck Depression Inventory (M = 15, Sd = 9).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This article serves as the first in a series of six articles providing a theoretically and empirically informed approach to understanding Muslim LGBTQ lives from an intersectional positive-growth framework, transformative intersectional psychology (TIP). Within this perspective, LGBTQ Muslims' religious, gender and sexual identities are mutually interactive and situated within the dynamic systems of power, privilege and oppression. This approach recognizes that LGBTQ individuals negotiate multiple minority identities as they navigate oppression and build pathways of resilience.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Multi-national and meta-analytic studies suggest that the pathways between religiousness and sexism/sexual prejudice are partially mediated by sociopersonality factors such as conservatism. In this article, we describe the contributing factors to this relationship, such as authoritarianism and fundamentalism. These factors interact at the dynamic nexus of individual and social development.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Much of the religious/spiritual development of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals (GLBs) has focused on experiences of conflict and distress, providing little insight into how these identities can be integrated. The present study explored the religious and spiritual lives of GLBs with a specific focus on the integration of these identities. We conducted a retrospective secondary data analysis of 750 GLB individuals from the Northern California Health Study to quantitatively assess sexual orientation and religion/spirituality integration using hierarchical cluster analysis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Coming out is often described as challenging, especially for individuals from conservative religious communities (Etengoff, 2013). In an effort to explore how these sociocultural conflicts are mediated, gay men (n = 16) and their family allies (n = 9) from Christian and Jewish communities wrote letters to religious leaders regarding current sexual minority policies and whether they should change or remain the same. Petitioning tasks were selected as letters can shift author-audience relations to allow for non-normative and unscripted expressions (Daiute & Lightfoot, 2004).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although the psychological literature regarding gay men from religious families is continually expanding, it is also limited in that few studies focus on the use of therapy in the negotiation of the interrelated systems of religion, sexuality, and family. Utilizing a cultural historical activity theory-based process of analysis, this study focuses on the narratives of 12 clinicians discussing 230 conflicts and how those conflicts are mediated in both productive (e.g.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF