Women's feminist consciousness, anger, and psychological distress
The goal of this study was to bring together several lines of research and theory on women's feminist consciousness from psychology, sociology, and philosophy. Past literatures had suggested bivariate links between feminist identity development and psychological distress, feminist identity and anger, feminist identity and interpersonal conflict, plus anger and psychological distress. Putting the pieces together, the authors hypothesized that anger would mediate the associations between feminist identity and distress. Path analyses using data from 191 women indicated consistent links with distress only for the revelation dimension of feminist identity attitudes. All 9 links were mediated by anger, as predicted, while holding social desirability constant. The authors encourage continued attention to both the positive and painful effects of politicized consciousness.