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Stigma-Related Stress and Emotion Differentiation Sexual minority (SM) individuals experience higher rates of internalizing psychopathology compared to heterosexual individuals (e.g., Gilman et al., 2001). These disparities have been hypothesized to result from increased stigma-related stressors that SM individuals face (Brooks, 1981; Meyer, 2003). The psychological mediation framework proposes that disruptions in affective processing, such as emotion dysregulation, mediate the link between stigma-related experiences and SM individuals’ disproportionately high risk of internalizing mental health problems (Hatzenbuehler, 2009). Increasing work has examined associations between stigma-related stress and emotion regulation (ER). For example, experiences of homophobia and biphobia has been associated with heightened ER difficulties (Keating & Muller, 2020). However, most work on stigma and affective processes has (1) largely relied on self-report measures and (2) focused almost exclusively on ER strategies, leaving other emotion-related processes under examined. Cardona and colleagues (2022) posit that when an environment fails to recognize a person’s valid emotions (e.g., through chronic invalidation and experiences with stigma), that person may not learn how to accurately identify, understand, or label their own emotions. Furthermore, chronic exposure to stigma-related stress can deplete self-regulatory resources, undermining individuals’ ability to understand and manage emotions (Inzlicht et al., 2006). Knowledge of one’s own emotional experience is thought to be a critical source of healthy psychological functioning. Identification of one’s emotions, therefore, may be a specific affective process that is impaired by experiences of stigma-related stress for SM individuals. Emotional differentiation—the ability to make fine-grained distinctions between similar emotions—is one of the primary elements of emotion knowledge (Barrett, 2004). Individuals differ greatly in how specifically they experience emotion. Individuals who are high in emotion differentiation label their emotions in specific, context-dependent ways, whereas individuals who are low in emotion differentiation often have less specific and granular emotional experiences. For example, someone who is high in emotion differentiation easily can identify feeling anger from feeling sadness. Someone who is low in emotion differentiation might say they experience both equally and combine those specific emotions into a more general category (e.g., feeling “bad”) (Kashdan et al., 2015). Increased emotion differentiation of one’s own emotions has been conceptualized as an adaptive function that helps humans navigate our increasingly complex social worlds by enabling individuals to respond to emotional situations in an effective way (Barrett, 2017). Low negative emotion differentiation has been linked to various mental health outcomes, such as social anxiety, depression, and borderline personality disorder (Demiralp et al., 2012; Kashdan & Farmer, 2014; Starr et al., 2017). Emotion differentiation Emerging evidence has shown that high levels of stress predict lower negative emotion differentiation, or the decreased ability to distinguish between negative emotions (Erbas et al., 2018). In a daily diary study, high levels of stress on the previous day negatively predicted emotion differentiation on the next day (but not vice-versa) (Erbas et al., 2018), suggesting emotion differentiation may be both malleable and susceptible to environmental stressors. However, no research to our knowledge has examined the potential association between stigma-related stress and negative emotion differentiation. As a primary objective of this study, we plan to address this gap by examining the relationship between experiences of stigma and negative emotion differentiation using a standardized emotion-differentiation behavioral task. Emotion Intensity As a secondary aim, we plan to explore the relationship between stigma and emotion intensity as measured by the emotion differentiation behavioral task. Individuals exposed to early-life trauma and chronic stress show increased emotion reactivity leading to more intense negative emotional responses (McLaughlin et al., 2010, Weissman et al., 2019). Consistent with these studies—and with scholarship conceptualizing stigma as a form of early-life adversity—stigma could similarly trigger negative affect and emotion reactivity that may undermine mental well-being. Past research suggests that discrimination may intensify threat appraisals during everyday life stressors and increase reactivity to other stressors (Doane & Zeiders, 2014), which in turn may lead individuals to experience negative emotion at a greater intensity. Single Emotion Experiences As an exploratory aim, we plan to explore the intensity of specific negative emotions measured in the emotion differentiation task. The five emotions include fear, anger, upset, disgust, and sadness. Specific emotions such as fear and anger might be particularly salient for stigmatized individuals, which may result in heightened reports of experiencing these emotions compared to other negative emotions. Expectations of rejection have been shown to be accompanied by anticipatory emotions such as anxiety or anger (London et al., 2007). Anger is also a common response to experiences of injustice (Richman & Leary, 2009; Wang et al., 2011). Sexual orientation-related discrimination has also been associated with both anxiety and anger (Swim et al., 2019). We plan to examine individual emotions in two ways as exploratory analyses. First, we will explore the association between stigma exposure and the intensity of each emotion. Second, we will examine the association between stigma exposure and emotion differentiation ability for each emotion. Current Study In this study, we hope to explore whether exposure to stigma-related stress may affect negative emotion differentiation ability and emotion intensity. In addition, we will also examine whether stigma-related stress affects differentiation ability and intensity of specific negative emotions. We will examine two forms of stigma: perceived discrimination and family reaction. Emotion differentiation and emotion intensity will be measured using a standardized emotion-differentiation behavioral task (e.g., Nook et al., 2018). If our hypotheses are supported, we plan to build on this work in two potential ways. First, we could examine the mental health consequences of low negative emotion differentiation and whether negative emotion differentiation mediates the association between stigma and internalizing psychopathology. Second, we could identify mechanisms and moderators of the association between stigma and negative emotion differentiation.