Employees with invisible and potentially stigmatizing identities frequently make decisions as to whom and to what extent they discuss their identity at work. Two studies were conducted to examine the specific stigma disclosure decisions that employees with invisible stigmas make toward specific coworkers and how certain characteristics of the relationship with the target coworker (i.e. the potential recipient of disclosure) may explain those decisions. Constructs related to the broader coworker network of the individual, his/her individual traits, and the organization were also examined. Attempts were also made to generalize these proposed relationships across two very different invisible stigmas: lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) identity and depression diagnosis identity. Results indicate that both LGB employees (Study 1) and employees diagnosed with depression (Study 2) tend to make different disclosure decisions to different coworkers in their network and that these decisions can be explained, in part, by the employee's perceptions of that coworker's supportiveness and their trust in that coworker. Further, results suggested that for LGB employees, disclosure to a specific coworker was also encouraged by having at least one very supportive/trustworthy coworker in their overall network, working for an organization with LGB-friendly policies, and by a high propensity to take risks. Differential findings between these two identities suggest potential limitations of applying general stigma disclosure models to depression identity. Overall, results suggest that the target relationship is an important factor in disclosure decision-making and that studies examining disclosure without looking at specific disclosure decisions may be missing key factors in the process.
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