Assistant Professor of Psychology Kristina Howansky was recently published in the journal “Social Psychological and Personality Science.”
With “Seeing Gender: Perceptual Representations of Transgender Individuals," Howansky uses novel paradigms (i.e., facial morphing, avatar generation), to demonstrate that people perceptually represent an individual labeled as transgender as less gender-typical than the same individual without the transgender label. Moreover, Howansky and her co-authors established that representing a transgender woman as less gender-typical was associated with the extent to which people felt comfortable with her using the women's restroom and representing herself according to her gender identity. Given that many policy issues surrounding transgender individuals are contingent on how transgender people are categorized, this work suggests that being perceived as less gender-typical may be one more hurdle transgender individuals face in their struggle to be recognized in accordance with their gender identities.
The full article can be found here.
