How do you experience discrimination? - Chapter 10

What are social stigma's?

Individuals with privileged status define which groups do or do not share their status. Groups that don’t share their status are called stigmatised or deviant groups. Stigmatised groups differ from privileged groups in terms of appearance or behaviour. Members of stigmatised groups violate the norms established by the dominant group and sometimes are punished for this.

It all depends on the culture and historical events which groups will be stigmatised. The Irish and Italians were stigmatised groups in the United States, now they are fully accepted. So laws, cultural events and social norms determine which groups are stigmatised. They are usually stigmatised because they have a certain characteristic that is devalued by the dominant group.

Some stigmas are less severe than others. For example, there are benign stigmas, like acne and short-term illness. These stigmas are less severe than stigmas based on ethnicity, severe illness and sexual orientation. There are five characteristics that can be used to differentiate between harmful and benign stigmas:

1. Course: benign stigmas are temporary; the course of this stigma is short. Acne will eventually disappear. The course of negative stigmas can’t be changed.
2. Concealability: some stigmas are concealable, this means that they can be controlled by the stigmatised person. One can keep the stigma private or hide it. Concealing a stigma, however, brings guilt and shame to oneself.
3. Aesthetic qualities: this refers to something that is beautiful and appealing. A lot of stigmas are triggered by physical cues. Less physically attractive people will be more likely to be stigmatised.
4. Origin: stigmas that are uncontrollable (like cancer) are seen differently than controllable stigmas (like obesity). The physical characteristics somebody is born with are seen as uncontrollable. People who feel that a stigma is uncontrollable feel more pity and less anger towards the individual than towards an individual with a stigma that is perceived as controllable.
5. Peril: some members of stigmatised groups are seen as dangerous. Persons with a mental illness, for example, are seen as dangerous. Groups that are assumed to be more dangerous are more stigmatised than groups perceived as less dangerous.

How does stigma by association work?

When someone from the majority group is associated with somebody from a stigmatised group, he or she will be stigmatised as well. This is called courtesy stigma. So if you interact with a fat person or a gay man you can be stigmatised. This can have negative effects. Someone could not be promoted because he or she is associated with someone from a stigmatised group. Even if you date somebody with a disability you might be seen as less intelligent.

What is tokenism?

A group doesn’t have to be in the minority to be a stigmatised group. Women, for example, are represented in the work force at numbers nearly equal to men. In some work groups, however, women are underrepresented. Because of this they can be treated as tokens. They can be stigmatised because of this. Usually this token group member will be stereotyped. Group members only look at the characteristics that fit the stereotypes. They usually don’t see the behaviour that does not conform to the stereotype. This is called assimilation. The token group member will usually feel watched, talked about, gossiped about and alone. They receive a lot of heat in the profession they have chosen. Even men can be seen as tokens. This will occur when they chose a profession that is usually seen as a female-profession. Like working in a day care. They will be looked upon as if they have sexual intentions because men don’t usually work in day-care.

How to response to prejudice and discrimination?

People find it difficult to talk about prejudice and discrimination. When you place a majority group and a stigmatised group in one room, they will probably both feel uncomfortable. This is probably because of ambivalent feelings of the majority group towards the stigmatised group. Stigmatised groups usually notice this. They will react with attributional ambiguity. They will find it difficult to interpret the majority group’s feedback about them, because this feedback can be based on real ability or on pity. Research found that some white people gave more positive feedback to Blacks than to Whites form the same poor performance. So stigmatised group members will wonder if somebody really has positive feelings about them or if he or she is just being nice. Sometimes stigmatised group members will discount the feedback or augment it. By discounting it, they protect themselves. If they receive negative feedback they could think that this is not based on the truth but on prejudice. They protect themselves this way. When they discount positive feedback, however, their self-esteem will be lowered.

What is personal/group discrimination discrepancy?

Sometimes people think that their group will be discriminated more as a whole than the individuals on their own. This is called the personal/group discrimination discrepancy (PGDD). There are two main categories of explanations for this phenomenon. One is the cognitive explanation. The way certain information is presented can inhibit or produce the perception of discrimination. Also, people use different comparison standards when judging their own versus the group’s level of discrimination. When deciding about their personal experience with discrimination people consider their experiences in comparison with their own group members and when deciding about the groups’ discriminatory experiences they compare themselves to other groups. So one woman might feel that she’s better off than most women, but that her group as a whole is not doing so good as men.

Motivational explanations assume that people think they are not personally discriminated against even when their group is. They might take responsibility and really feel that they didn’t do something the right way instead of blaming it on discrimination.

Also, when they do acknowledge that they are discriminated, they actually also acknowledge that they are different than other people from their social environment. They do not want this and that’s why they won’t always acknowledge that they’re discriminated. Another reason for not admitting one is discriminated, is because people don’t want to be viewed as whiners.

What are costs and benefits of claiming discrimination?

Research on PGDD demonstrates that people think their group experiences more discrimination than they do as individuals. However, it would be incorrect to conclude that people never recognize that they are also personally being discriminated against. 

Detecting discrimination might look straightforward, but changes in social norms have resulted in more subtle and indirect expressions of prejudice which are far more difficult to recognize. People also label negative behaviour of an outgroup member negative than the same behaviour displayed by an ingroup member. Women are high in stigma consciousness, meaning that they believe that they live in a stereotypd world and that this has effect on their interactions with outgroup members. 

When people have experienced discrimination, how willing are people to confront? Not very. Research shows that only 36% of people have the nerve to confront somebody. Making claims fo unfairness or discrimination also has a social costs that many people try to avoid. People react more negatively to being confronted by an outgroup member than by an ingroup member. 

What are the consequences of prejudice for the target?

Because most minority groups know that there are certain stereotypes about them, they can be fearful of confirming that judgment. If this fear is strong enough it can really interfere with someone’s achievements, even when there have been no discriminatory actions towards this person. A person doesn’t even have to believe that this stereotype applies to him. Still he might fear that others think that the stereotype applies to him. Stereotype threat can affect any group for which a negative stereotype exists. The nature of the threat can also vary for every group. Also, when a minority group member performance a difficult task, he/she will be more likely to be affected by a stereotype threat. Providing role models reduces stereotype threats. When women were presented with a female role model, they performed better on a math tests (women stereotype is that they are not really good at maths) than women who were not presented with a female role model.

Stereotype lift menas that members of a nonstereotyped group engage in doward social comparisons, that is, when they evaluate themselves to others who perform even worse than they do. 

Is there a vulnerability to stress?

Stress can produce mental and physical problems. Discrimination can produce stress. This usually only happens with chronic experience of prejudice, such as repeatedly being stared at, or experience of a major individual incidence of prejudice, like being threatened by physical violence. Also, certain normative or nonnormative events can influence certain stigmatised groups. Coming-out is a big deal for gay men and women and they may experience stress because of this, because they worry that they will maybe lose their loved ones once they know that they are gay. Some prejudice and discrimination can produce stress through indirect means. Poor children go to poorly schools and usually have parents that are not really supporting them in their academic achievements. Because they also have poor health care they will be performing less well in school. All these things build up and they can create stress.

Stress usually makes people more vulnerable to illnesses, like catching a cold. A lot of people also get headaches and can’t sleep well. They sometimes deal with this by using alcohol or eat a lot. This is of course also not good. Stress can also have a long-term effect. People who have been discriminated and had stress because of this were more likely to abuse substances. Their children will see this and they will also be more likely to abuse substances.

What are threaths to self-esteem?

People usually think that one’s self-esteem will be lowered because of discrimination. Research shows inconsistent findings. Blacks have higher self-esteem than other ethnic groups, even Whites. Out of all ethnic groups, Blacks are disliked the most. Clearly, discrimination has no effect on their self-esteem.

Asians and Hispanics, however, had a lower self-esteem than Whites. Racial identity didn’t improve self-esteem for these groups. This is because these two groups are seen as collectivists. People with this perspective think that the self is flexible and that the group is more important than the self. Maintaining and enhancing self-esteem is not associated with collectivism. Collectivism emphasizes self-criticism, because it leads to self-improvement and doesn’t make one stand out.

How to cope with discrimination?

One coping strategy against discrimination is psychological disengagement. When one thinks he is going to fail on a test, he is going to tell himself that the test is not that important. Another way is by dismissing the negative feedback. When somebody gets negative feedback he will dismiss is at invalid, because it is a source of prejudice. Also, someone can distance himself from the area in which his group is negatively stereotyped. A woman might think that she’ll fail a maths test, but that will not matter because she does not want a career in maths. She will focus on subjects she will do good at and her self-esteem will not be lowered. Minority groups are discriminated more than once and will develop coping strategies for this. One of these is behavioural compensation. People sometimes compensate for potential discrimination by changing their behaviour in ways that disconfirm the stereotype. An example of this is using jokes by fat people. These people know that they might be discriminated and they therefore decide to be funny so they will be liked and people won’t make jokes probably. If the prejudice is too severe, one can’t compensate.