Table 5.

Comparison of Three Experimental Studies of Intra-Minority Gay Community Stress (Studies 2–4)

	Study 2	Study 3	Study 4
Research question	Do status concerns underlie gay and bisexual men’s experience of stress when interacting with other gay, compared to heterosexual, men?	Is other gay men’s status a source of stress when interacting with them (i.e., intra-minority stress)?	Do status concerns underlie gay and bisexual men’s experience of stress when interacting with gay and bisexual men (i.e., intra-minority stress)?
Conditions	Condition 1: Rejection from gay men in online chat Condition 2: Rejection from presumably heterosexual men in online chat	Condition 1: Rejection from high-status gay men in online chat Condition 2: Rejection from low-status gay men in online chat	In all conditions, rejecters were presented as gay and bisexual. Condition 1: Disclose non-status-related information + Get rejected on non-status-related information (non-status-related-disclose/non-status-related-rejection) Condition 2: Disclose status-related information + Get rejected on non-status-related information (status-disclose/non-status-related-rejection) Condition 3: Disclose status-related information + Get rejected on status-related information (status-disclose/status-rejection)
Sample	103 gay and bisexual men from existing online study panels (masked to study inclusion criteria)	83 gay and bisexual men from existing online study panels	252 gay and bisexual men recruited mostly from a general large social networking site (and 6.7% from a large sexual networking application for gay and bisexual men)
Dependent variable	Implicit feelings of exclusion	Implicit feelings of exclusion	Perceived stress Explicit feelings of exclusion
Findings	Condition effect: Rejection from presumably heterosexual men yielded higher felt exclusion than rejection from gay men Status effect: Participant’s status was inversely associated with felt exclusion Condition x status interaction: Marginally significant interaction; status was negatively associated with felt exclusion following rejection from gay men, but not heterosexual men	Condition effect: Rejection from high-status gay men yielded higher felt exclusion than rejection from low-status gay men Status effect: Participant’s status was not associated with felt exclusion Condition x status interaction: No significant interaction	Condition effect: No effect Perceived comparative status effect: Participants with higher perceived comparative status reported less stress and less felt exclusion Effects of perceived comparative status with stress as DV:  Condition 1: negative (p = .053)  Condition 2: negative (p < .001)  Condition 3: negative (p < .001) Effects of perceived comparative status with felt exclusion as DV:  Condition 1: positive (p = .298)  Condition 2: negative (p = .794)  Condition 3: negative (p < .05)