“The Social Development of Contingent Self-Worth in Sexual Minority Young Men: An Empirical Investigation of the ‘Best Little Boy in the World’ Hypothesis”, 2013-03-19 (; backlinks):
[media] Young sexual minority men might cope with early stigma by strongly investing in achievement-related success.
Sexual minority men (n = 136) reported deriving their self-worth from:
academics (d = 0.33), appearance (d = 0.33), and competition (d = 0.35) more so than heterosexual men (n = 56). Length of early sexual orientation concealment predicted investment in these domains (β = 0.19, 0.22, 0.24) and an objective measure of stigma predicted the degree to which young sexual minority men sought self-worth through competition (β = 0.26).
A 9-day experience sampling approach confirmed that investment in achievement-related domains exacts negative health consequences for young sexual minority men.
…The “Best Little Boy In The World” Hypothesis
Contemporary personal and clinical narratives of early sexual minority male identity development, starting with an autobiography by Andrew Tobias (197648ya) called The Best Little Boy in the World, consistently note that completely concealing one’s sexual orientation to avoid rejection from others in early life can produce an overcompensation in achievement-related domains, where success and validation can be guaranteed in the event that others discover and reject one’s sexual orientation (eg. 2005; 1996; 1992; 1998). For example, noting sexual minority youths’ tendency to mask their stigma by investing in achievement-oriented esteem, stated in his book The Velvet Rage,
We survived by learning to conform to the expectations of others. … What would you like me to be? A great student? … The first-chair violinist? … How would we love ourselves when everything around us told us that we were unlovable?” (pg15–16).
This notion of avoiding discovery through achievement in domains such as academics is captured in several other personal narratives. 1992 wrote in Becoming a Man,
With a shudder of revulsion I shut the final door … letting no one touch me for the next 5 years. I was sure I could live without it. … I grew more invisible every day. I buried myself in books (pg78).
2006 expressed a similar sentiment in Covering:
I sensed these bodies knew other bodies the way I knew calculus or Shakespeare. … I knew only I was asked not to be myself, and that to fail to meet that demand was to make myself illegible, my future unimaginable. … On Saturday nights, I would sit in my cement-block dorm room with my face lit green by my IBM’s glow, agonizing not over women, or men, but line breaks. (pg5)