Changing beliefs about gender: the relation between contact with gender nonconforming individuals and gender essentialism

ABSTRACT Increasing numbers of individuals are openly identifying outside of the gender binary, which may have broader effects on how people view gender. Little research has examined how contact with gender nonconforming (GNC) individuals may influence others’ conceptualisations of gender. Through seven studies with 2,547 participants, we found that contact with GNC individuals corresponded to reduced gender essentialism. In two correlational studies, we found that contact with GNC people predicted reduced gender essentialism even when controlling for sexism and contact with women. In a series of four experimental studies, we found some evidence that imagining contact with a GNC person resulted in significantly less gender essentialism than imagining contact with a woman, though this was not consistent across studies using other types of control conditions. In a final study, we found that media contact with either a trans man or a genderfluid person reduced gender essentialism compared to contact with a cisgender man, demonstrating that contact effects generalised across exposure to different types of gender identities. This work suggests that a person’s conceptualisation of gender may be changed through contact with GNC people.