Stigma Consciousness: The Psychological Legacy of Social Stereotypes

Abstract

Whereas past researchers have treated targets of stereotypes as though they have uniform reactions to their stereotyped status (e.g., J. Crocker & B. Major, 1989; C. M. Steele & J. Aronson, 1995), it is proposed here that targets differ in the extent to which they expect to be stereotyped by others (i.e., stigma consciousness). Six studies, 5 of which validate the stigma-consciousness questionnaire (SCQ), are presented. The results suggest that the SCQ is a reliable and valid instrument for detecting differences in stigma consciousness. In addition, scores on the SCQ predict perceptions of discrimination and the ability to generate convincing examples of such discrimination. The final study highlights a behavioral consequence of stigma consciousness: the tendency for people high in stigma consciousness to forgo opportunities to invalidate stereotypes about their group. The relation of stigma consciousness to past research on targets of stereotypes is considered as is the issue of how stigma consciousness may encourage continued stereotyping.

Full text

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
1999,
Vol. 76, No. 1, 114-128Copyright 1999 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.
0022-3514/99/S3.00
Stigma Consciousness: The Psychological Legacy of Social Stereotypes
Elizabeth C. Pinel
University of Texas at Austin
Whereas past researchers have treated targets of stereotypes as though they have uniform reactions to
their stereotyped status (e.g., J. Crocker & B. Major, 1989; C. M. Steele & J. Aronson, 1995), it is
proposed here that targets differ in the extent to which they expect to be stereotyped by others (i.e., stigma
consciousness). Six studies, 5 of which validate the stigma-consciousness questionnaire (SCQ), are
presented. The results suggest that the SCQ is a reliable and valid instrument for detecting differences
in stigma consciousness. In addition, scores on the SCQ predict perceptions of discrimination and the
ability to generate convincing examples of such discrimination. The final study highlights a behavioral
consequence of stigma consciousness: the tendency for people high in stigma consciousness to forgo
opportunities to invalidate stereotypes about their group. The relation of stigma consciousness to past
research on targets of stereotypes is considered as is the issue of how stigma consciousness may
encourage continued stereotyping.
Innocent chatter, the currency of ordinary social life, or a compliment
("You don't think like a woman"), the well-intentioned advice of
psychologists, the news item, the joke, the cosmetics advertisement—
none of these is what it is or what it was. Each reveals
itself,
depending on the circumstances in which it appears, as a threat, an
insult, an affront, as a reminder, however subtle, that I belong to an
inferior caste.
—S.
L. Bartky, "Toward a Phenomenology
of Feminist Consciousness"
And I always feel this with.. .people—that whenever they're being
nice to me, pleasant to me, all the time really, underneath they're only
assessing me as a criminal and nothing else. It's too late for me to be
any different now to what I am, but I still feel this keenly, that that's
their only approach, and they're quite incapable of accepting me as
anything else.
—E.
Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management
of Spoiled Identity
For some targets of stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination al-
ways seem to be "out
there."
It is easy to understand why. Researchers
have documented the pervasiveness of stereotypes in our society, both
in terms of the number of groups that are stereotyped and the number
of people who endorse stereotypes about these groups (cf. Crocker &
Major, 1989). From this perspective, it is surprising that targets of
Elizabeth C. Pinel, Department of Psychology, University of Texas at
Austin.
This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant
SBR-9319570. Portions of this research were conducted in partial fulfill-
ment of my doctoral dissertation at the University of Texas at Austin.
I thank Jennifer Bosson, Bob Helmreich, Kelli Keough, Blake Shepard,
and especially Bill Swann for their helpful comments on an earlier version
of this article. I also thank Janet Spence for her invaluable input during the
early stages of this work. Finally, I thank Janel Seagal and Demetrice Davis
for their assistance in the data collection phase of Study 3.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Elizabeth
C. Pinel, who is now at the Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State
University, 543 Moore Building, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802.
Electronic mail may be sent to ecp6@psu.edu.
stereotypes would ever think that their stereotyped status does not
influence how people treat them.
Empirical research corroborates the claim that targets of stereo-
types recognize that their group membership plays a role in how
people interact with them. For instance, when attractive students
received positive feedback, they were more likely to attribute the
feedback to their appearance when their evaluator could see them
than when their evaluator could not (Major, Carrington, &
Camevale, 1984). Similarly, when participants with cosmetically
applied facial scars interacted with a confederate, they later re-
ported that the scar influenced their interaction—even when the
scar had surreptitiously been removed prior to the interaction
(Kleck & Strenta, 1980)!
Of course, targets of stereotypes do not always interpret their
experiences in terms of their group membership. One important
determinant of this interpretive tendency seems to be the percep-
tions of the probability of being stereotyped. In one test of this
hypothesis, women learned that they would soon receive evalua-
tions from eight male judges and that either 100%, 75%, 50%,
25%,
or 0% of these judges were known to have discriminated
against women (Ruggiero & Taylor, 1997, Study 1). These women
then received a poor evaluation (i.e., a grade of F on a test of their
future prospects). Only when the women were certain that their
evaluators were sexist did they attribute their poor performance to
discrimination. Other, more naturalistic methods for increasing the
perceived probability of being stereotyped seem to have the same
effect. For example, women who anticipated being the sole woman
in a group expected to be stereotyped more than women who did
not expect to occupy such a solo status (Cohen & Swim, 1995).
There may also be stable individual differences in the extent to
which targets expect to be stereotyped or discriminated against.
For example, targets who remain largely insulated from out-group
members would have few occasions on which to reflect on their
stereotyped status (e.g., McGuire & McGuire, 1981). Presumably,
such targets should perceive less of a probability of being stereo-
typed than targets who were raised in a community composed
primarily of out-group members (see Crosby, 1982; Major, 1994).
Whether the perceived probability of being stereotyped is situ-
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