Personality across Sexual Identity and Gender in a National Probability Sample in New Zealand

Preliminary evidence in online and convenience samples has shown small but significant personality differences across sexual identity and gender over a number of personality traits. The idea that gender intersects with sexual identity to affect personality has been formalized into two hypotheses: the gender inversion hypothesis (that lesbians and heterosexual men, as well as gay men and heterosexual women, have indistinguishable mean scores on personality traits) and the gender shift hypothesis (that gay men's and lesbians' personality scores fall somewhere between those of heterosexual women and men). We investigate personality differences in self-identified sexual identity across and within gender in a large, national probability sample in New Zealand (N = 14,230). There was support for the gender inversion hypothesis on some traits; lesbians (relative to heterosexual women) had similar conscientiousness scores to those of heterosexual men, and gay men (relative to heterosexual men) scored similar to heterosexual women in agreeableness and emotional stability. Our work highlights the importance of taking an intersectional approach to simultaneously consider gender and sexual identity when it comes to understanding personality.