An Inclusive Mindset Towards Transgender Youth Through Inner Dialogue

Abstract

In past decades awareness of transgender issues and acceptance of transgender individuals has grown, but today transgender youth is still at risk for mental health problems and bullying. This lagging acceptance implies a need for effective ways to increase tolerance. Through inner dialogue between different voices, individuals can gain new perspectives on others. We investigated whether tolerance towards transgender youth can be increased through awareness or inner dialogue. We also investigated working ingredients of inner dialogue for increasing tolerance. We conducted an online randomised controlled trial with control, awareness, and inner dialogue conditions and a pre-posttest design among youth aged 16 to 25 (n = 156). The T-KAB questionnaire measured the level of tolerance before and after each condition. We compared difference scores of tolerance increase between conditions using a one-way ANOVA. In addition, we scored the inner dialogues on presence of reflection, personal engagement, and alliance and explored the relationship of these dialogue characteristics to tolerance increase using non-parametric tests. Results indicated a significant difference between groups. A post hoc analysis revealed that awareness explained an increase in tolerance. Inner dialogue also appears to increase tolerance, but the effect is not significant. Additional analyses of the inner dialogue condition revealed a significant difference between groups for personal engagement, but not for alliance and reflection. Results indicate that awareness matters for tolerance, that there is potential for inner dialogue, and that friendship is important for a positive outcome of dialogue. Future research should focus on the design and characteristics of inner dialogue to further examine its potential.