Employees with an invisible stigmatized identity, such as a minority sexual orientation, religion, or psychological disorder, engage in a balancing act between expressing who they are with hiding negative aspects of themselves from others. Two key goals are posited to underlie identity management behaviors, a motivation to self-verify and a motivation to self-enhance (Swann, 1987). However, the specific role of each motive in identity management behaviors is largely not well understood. The current study attempts to clarify the mediating role of both self-verification and self-enhancement motives in the relationship between identity centrality and identity management behaviors in a sample of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) employees. Results indicate that both self-verification and self-enhancement motives mediate the relationship between LGB identity centrality and identity management behaviors. The different identity management behaviors uniquely predict LGB employee job perceptions, turnover intentions, and well-being. Surprisingly, perceptions of work context such as perceptions of risk of disclosure and perceptions of diverse organizational climate did not predict the centrality of their LGB identity specific to the workplace. Furthermore, centrality of the LGB identity at work was not related to their identity management behaviors, irrespective of self-verification motive. The findings of this study contribute to a better understanding of why employees manage stigmatized identities and the job-related and health outcomes of their identity management decisions.
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