Passing and Panic: Investigating the Role of Passing and Perceived Deception in the Trans-Panic Defense

The trans-panic legal defense justifies violence against transgender individuals due to defendants’ alleged panic upon learning someone’s transgender identity. Perceived deception and one’s ability to present as the gender with which they identify are drivers of intergroup hostility between transgender and cisgender individuals. Based on expectancy violations theory, we conducted two experiments (Experiment 1, N = 808; Experiment 2, N = 1,006) that examined defendant- and victim-oriented consequences of passing status and the trans-panic defense. We found partial support for our predictions: poorer victim-oriented outcomes (e.g., victim blame) and more positive defendant-oriented outcomes (e.g., fewer guilty verdicts, more lenient sentencing) occurred for passing versus non-passing transgender (Experiments 1-2) and cisgender victims (Experiment 2) through increases in perceived deception and moral outrage (Experiment 2). Our findings underscore implications for how transphobia proliferates.