Abstract

The low acceptance of sexual minorities in Korean culture promotes discrimination and prejudice against them, which can negatively affect their mental health. Therefore, we attempted to replicate Deitz (2015), which investigated the mediation effect of expecting rejection experiences in the relationship between sexual orientation microaggression and psychological well-being. To this end, we conducted an online survey of 158 Korean gay, lesbian, bisexual and pansexual in their twenties. The results revealed that sexual orientation microaggression and rejection sensitivity were positively correlated, whereas rejection sensitivity and psychological well-being were negatively correlated. However, the correlation between sexual orientation microaggression and psychological well-being was not significant. Furthermore, the indirect effect of rejection sensitivity in the relationship between sexual orientation microaggression and psychological well-being was found significant, but that the direct effect of sexual orientation microaggression and psychological well-being was not. Taken together, these results were consistent with those found in Deitz (2015), which showed only the indirect effect of expecting rejection experiences in the relationship between sexual orientation microaggression and psychological well-being. This study suggests that the mechanism of how discrimination experience affects mental health is the same in cultures with different acceptance levels of sexual minorities. The implications of these results are discussed for clinical and counseling interventions that could help reduce the negative impact of discrimination experiences on mental health of sexual minorities. In addition, the direction of future research is presented to address the limitations of the present study in terms of research design and sampling.