The gender-sex incongruence is partly a mind–body incongruence

Abstract Transgender individuals consider their gender (a psychological construct) as distinct from their natal gender, assigned based on their sex (i.e., their body). Does this incongruence reflect a dissonance between sex and gender, specifically, or a broader tension in the perception of minds and bodies? To address this question, here we gauged mind–body intuitions in transgender and cisgender individuals. Results showed that transgender participants considered the mind as more ethereal, as more resilient to the obliteration of one’s body by death (in Experiment 1) and to its swapping with another person’s body (in Experiment 2). Remarkably, these intuitions emerged even when participants were asked to consider psychological traits that are unrelated to gender (e.g., forming sentences). They also correlated with participants’ own gender identity. These results reveal striking psychological differences between transgender and cisgender individuals. In the eyes of transgender people, the self is aligned more strongly with the ethereal mind, rather than with the body.