Group identity-based self-protective strategies: the stigma of race, gender, and garlic
✍ Scribed by Christian S. Crandall; Jo-Ann Tsang; Richard D. Harvey; Thomas W. Britt
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 2000
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 215 KB
- Volume
- 30
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0046-2772
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
We examine the importance of group membership in stigma and its role in the eectiveness of self-protective cognitions in three experiments. In Experiment 1, men are asked to interact with an attractive female who will judge their value as a potential date, and either eat a mint or a clove of raw garlic prior to the interview. Although the stigmatized-by-garlic men discounted negative feedback and attributed it to their garlic breath, discounting and attributions were negatively correlated with self-esteem. In Experiment 2, White participants were evaluated positively or negatively by a bogus partner who the participants believed had been told that the participant was either White or Black. Although participants receiving negative feedback engaged in several self-protective cognitions, including attributing their negative feedback to racism, the strategies were uncorrelated with self-esteem. In Experiment 3, women prepared to interact via computer with a partner who expressed sexist or non-sexist beliefs. In the absence of feedback, self-esteem increased when their partner was sexist. In contrast with the ®rst two experiments, perceiving the partner as prejudiced was signi®cantly and positively correlated with self-esteem. Together, these experiments suggest that selfprotective cognitions ®nd their eectiveness when stigma has a basis in group membership.