Trans and Nonbinary Perspectives on Gender Diversity in Psychological Stimuli

Social cognition research has begun to examine perceptual underpinnings of pervasive bias toward gender-diverse people (including trans*, nonbinary, genderqueer, and additional identities). Though nascent work orients toward reducing bias against gender minorities, the stimuli used in this work often fail to reflect naturalistic gender diversity – in part due to lacking representation of gender diversity in available stimulus resources. In the current work, using a photo elicitation method, we prioritize the perspectives of gender-diverse perceivers (N = 44) to answer fundamental questions about the representation of gender diversity in psychological stimuli. Participants overall indicated that existing stimuli failed to represent naturalistic gender diversity, and that the representation of gender diversity in stimuli is an important goal. However, participants voiced concerns about how this representation might be executed in the research context. Building from stated concerns, we provide community-engaged recommendations for researchers interested in studying gender diversity through a social cognitive lens.