Unpacking Anti‐Transgender Bias: Leveraging Mechanisms From Person Perception

ABSTRACT Anti‐transgender bias is an important area of research given the disproportionate negative outcomes transgender relative to cisgender individuals experience. Yet, the mechanisms underlying this disproportionate negative bias remain understudied. We posit that a person perception perspective could be particularly beneficial to characterize mechanisms for this negative bias experienced by transgender individuals. We hypothesize that slower or more effortful processing when processing the gender of transgender versus cisgender individuals contributes to discrimination against transgender individuals (e.g., misgendering and degendering). We introduce and discuss two forms of potentially disfluent gender processing, conceptual and perceptual, and explore their potential connections to these biases. We also suggest how the existing literature on person perception can guide future research on the mechanisms driving anti‐transgender bias and, consequently, potentially inform interventions to reduce bias against the transgender community.