Testing a Mediational Framework for Sexual Minority Resilience

The purpose of this study was to test Kwon's resilience framework model in a sample of LGBQA+ participants. Kwon's framework suggested that hope/optimism, social support, and emotional openness indirectly affect psychological well-being by reducing an individual's reactivity to prejudice. Participants were a national sample of 251 lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, queer, asexual, or questioning adult individuals recruited from social media and Listservs who completed an online survey. After controlling for education, social class, and nonbinary gender status, structural equation modeling results did not support Kwon's model. None of the indirect effects in Kwon's model were supported; however, social support did significantly predict psychological well-being in the sample. Additionally, this study found that hope/optimism predicted reactivity to prejudice. Approximately 36% of the variance in psychological well-being was accounted for in Kwon's model. The predictor variables of social support, hope/optimism, and emotional openness accounted for approximately 19% of the variance of reactivity to prejudice. Overall, the results indicated that reactivity to prejudice did not mediate the relationships between emotional openness, hope/optimism, and social support with psychological well-being. Our results suggest implications for future resilience frameworks and several avenues for clinical interventions for increasing resilience in sexual minority individuals.