If you are a member of a group that is viewed or treated negatively by the larger society in which you live, your membership in that group is bound to affect you in some way (Allport, 1954). Yet, as you learned in the previous chapter, for many stigmatized groups in the United States, prejudice can be a lot subtler and harder to detect than it was 50 years ago. To an optimist, this is a sign of progress. But from a more pessimistic perspective, this makes it harder to detect when one is the target of prejudice, even when prejudice significantly affects one’s thoughts and behavior. This is a dilemma that anyone who feels marginalized in society probably has faced. Take the following quote from Erving Goffman’s classic 1963 book Stigma: “And I always feel this with straight people [people who are not ex-convicts]—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” (p. 14).

This individual’s reflection reveals the master status that can accompany stigmatizing attributes—the perception that others will see oneself solely in terms of one aspect rather than appreciating that that aspect is only one part of a total self. As a result, individuals are persistently aware of what sets them apart in their interactions with others. For example, when asked to describe themselves, students from an ethnic-minority background are more likely to make mention of their group identity than are students from the ethnic majority (McGuire et al., 1978). Arthur Ashe, the first Black male tennis champion, expressed it this way in his autobiography: “Like many other blacks, when I find myself in a new public situation, I will count. I always count. I count the number of black and brown faces present, especially to see how many, if any, are employed by the hosts” (Ashe & Rampersad, 1994, p. 144).

When people are conscious of being stigmatized, they become more vigilant to signs of prejudice. In one study, women expecting to interact with a sexist man were quicker to detect sexism-related words (e.g., harassment, hooters, bitch) during a computer task and were more likely to judge ambiguous facial expressions as showing criticism (Inzlicht et al., 2008; Kaiser et al., 2006).

Individual Differences in Perceiving Prejudice

As you might suspect, not all minority-group members share equally the expectation of being the target of prejudice. People’s sensitivity to perceiving bias and discrimination depends on the extent to which they identify with their stigmatized group. If people normally don’t think about themselves as being members of disadvantaged groups, then discrimination might not seem like something that could happen to them. For these individuals, others’ prejudice might have to be blatant before they acknowledge it. In contrast, people who are highly identified with their stigmatized group are more likely to recognize when prejudice and discrimination might affect their lives (Operario & Fiske, 2001; Major et al., 2003).

Members of minority groups also differ in their stigma consciousness, their expectation that other people—particularly those in the majority group—will perceive them in terms of their group membership (Pinel, 1999). Although members of stigmatized groups fall along a range of stigma consciousness, those at the higher end of this scale are more likely to expect their interactions with others to go poorly. Unfortunately, these expectations can sometimes lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. For example, when women particularly high in stigma consciousness had reason to think that a male stranger might be sexist, they evaluated an essay he had written more negatively, which then led him to evaluate their essays more negatively (Pinel, 2002). The negative evaluations they received might have confirmed their assumption of the man’s sexism, yet his evaluations might have been more positive if they had not criticized his essay first. But as we will discuss shortly, self-fulfilling prophecies are a two-way street. They also affect how those who are nonstigmatized perceive and interact with stigmatized targets.

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People differ in their perceptions of prejudice, and although they sometimes might overestimate their experience of prejudice, this is not the norm. Instead, it is more common for people to estimate that they personally experience less discrimination than does the average member of their group (Taylor et al., 1990). This effect, called the person-group discrimination discrepancy, has been documented in many groups, including women reporting on their experience of sexism and racial minorities reporting on their experience of racism. This effect has even been found among inner-city African American men, a group that is probably most likely to experience actual discrimination in employment, housing, and interactions with police (Taylor et al., 1994). Why is the tendency to avoid seeing prejudice and discrimination directed at oneself so pervasive?

Motivations to Avoid Perceptions of Prejudice

People may fail to see the prejudice targeted at them because they are motivated to deny that prejudice and discrimination affect their lives. Why? For one thing, this denial may be part of a more general tendency to be optimistic. Experiencing discrimination, having health problems, and being at risk for experiencing an earthquake all are negative events, and people are generally overly optimistic about their likelihood of experiencing such outcomes (Lehman & Taylor, 1987; Taylor & Brown, 1988). It might be beneficial to one’s own psychological health to regard discrimination as something that happens to other people.

Another reason is that people may be motivated to sustain their faith that the way society is set up is inherently right and good, thereby justifying the status quo (Jost & Banaji, 1994). Buying into the status quo brings a sense of stability and predictability, but it can lead stigmatized individuals to downplay their experience of discrimination. For example, in one experiment White and Latino students were put in the same situation of feeling that they had been passed over for a job that was given to someone of another ethnicity (Major et al., 2002). To what extent did they view this as discrimination? The results were quite different, depending on the students’ ethnicity. Among Whites, those most convinced that the social system in America is fair, and that hard work pays off, thought it was quite discriminatory for a Latino employer to pass them over to hire another Latino. After all, if the system is fair, and Whites have been very successful in the system, an employer has no justification for choosing a minority-group member over themselves. But among Latinos, those who saw the social system as fair were least likely to feel that it was discriminatory for a White employer to pass them over in favor of a White participant. Believing the system is fair might keep people motivated to do their best, but for members of minority groups in society, it can also reduce the likelihood of recognizing discrimination when it does occur.

Although being the target of prejudice has the power to affect how people perceive themselves, it also can affect how they behave and perform. When you hold a stereotypic expectation about another person (because of their group membership, for example) you may act in a way that leads the stereotyped person to behave just as you expected. For example, you suspect that the clerk at the café is going to be rude, so you are curt with her. She responds by being curt back to you and Voilà! Your initial judgment seems to be confirmed. Yet you may be ignoring the fact that, had you approached the interaction with a different expectation in mind, she might not have acted rudely.

This was demonstrated in a classic study by Rosenthal and Jacobson (1968) in which teachers’ stereotypic expectations of their students actually changed how those students performed in school. Students who were identified to the teachers as “bloomers”—that is, those who would likely experience a spurt in intellectual development—performed better over the course of the year than did students who were identified to the teachers as “non-bloomers.” This result might not be surprising until you realize that the researchers labeled the students as bloomers and non-bloomers on the basis of a flip of a coin. What happened? The teachers were more attentive to and challenged the students who had been labeled as bloomers, and those students benefited from this special treatment. This shows that when a person is the target of stereotypic expectations, it can lead other people to change how they act toward that person. As a result, the target starts to act more in line with others’ expectations. The other people walk away with their expectations confirmed, but they may not realize that they played a role in causing the target to act the way he or she did.

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The Rosenthal and Jacobson study demonstrates the power of positive expectations in creating self-fulfilling prophecies. Other research shows that negative stereotypic expectations can have damaging effects. Consider how in anticipation of a job interview, you would likely spend time preparing for it, practicing answers to certain questions. But have you ever stopped to consider that how you perform in the interview might partly be a function of the expectations the interviewer holds about you? A classic demonstration of self-fulfilling prophecies shows that it is (Word et al., 1974). In the first of a pair of studies, White participants were asked to play the role of an interviewer with two different job candidates, one who happens to be White and the other Black. The researchers watched these interviews and analyzed them for differences. It turned out that when the job candidate was Black, the interviewer chose to sit farther away from him, was more awkward in his speech, and conducted a shorter interview than when the candidate was White. Something about the race of the candidate affected the way in which the interview was conducted. But does this difference in the interviewer’s manner affect how the job candidate comes across during the interview?

The answer is yes. In a second study, the researchers trained their assistants to conduct an interview either using the “good interviewer” style that was more typical of the interviews with White candidates (e.g., sitting closer) or the “bad interviewer” style that was more typical of the interviews with Black candidates (e.g., sitting farther away). When the trained assistants interviewed unsuspecting White job candidates, an interesting pattern emerged. Those job candidates assigned to a “bad” interviewer came across as less calm and composed than those assigned to the “good” interviewer.

More recent research shows just how subtle these effects can be. In one set of studies, when female engineering students were paired with a male peer to work together on a project, his implicit sexist attitudes about women predicted her poorer performance on an engineering test (Logel et al., 2009). An interesting difference in this case was that the stereotype-confirming effects did not seem to result directly from negative beliefs the sexist men had about female competence in engineering. The sexist men were not more hostile or dismissive toward their female partners. Rather, they were more flirtatious with them, and in fact the women reported liking these men. Yet the men’s flirtatious behavior only cued the women into acting in line with gender stereotypes, which impaired their performance on the engineering test.

Confirming Stereotypes to Get Along

Such findings point to a powerful dilemma. Stereotypes are schemas. If you return to the function of schemas we discussed in chapter 3, you’ll remember that they help social interactions run smoothly. People get along better with each other when both individuals confirm the other person’s expectations. This suggests that the more motivated people are to affiliate and interact positively with someone, the more likely they will be to behave in ways that are consistent with the other person’s stereotypes, a form of self-stereotyping.

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This is exactly what research shows. In one study (Sinclair et al., 2005), women had a casual conversation with a male student whom they were led to believe had sexist or nonsexist attitudes toward women. In actuality, he was a member of the research team trained to act in a similar way with each woman and to rate his perceptions of her afterward. Those women who generally had a desire to get along with others and make new friends (i.e., they were high in affiliative motivation) rated themselves in more gender-stereotypic ways when interacting with the guy they believed to be sexist, and as shown in FIGURE 11.1, he also rated their behavior to be more stereotypically feminine. Those women who were low in this general motivation to affiliate with others did just the opposite. If they thought their conversation partner would be sexist, they rated themselves as being more counterstereotypic, and the researcher also rated them as coming across in less stereotypical ways during their interaction. This study shows that when people are motivated to get along with someone who is likely to hold stereotypes of them, they tend to experience a shift in their perceptions of themselves and behave accordingly.

Objectification

Although many consequences of being stigmatized apply broadly to different forms of prejudice, some are more specific to particular identities. One important example is the objectification that can result from the strong focus in many cultures on women’s bodies. The art historian John Berger (1972) wrote, “A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to others is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life” (p. 46).

In chapter 10, we discussed how the sexual objectification of women promotes certain stereotypes and prejudice against them. But Fredrickson and Robert’s (1997) objectification theory also proposes that this intense cultural scrutiny of the female body leads many girls and women to view themselves as objects to be looked at and judged, a phenomenon that the researchers called self-objectification. Being exposed to sexualizing words or idealized media images of women’s bodies, hearing other women criticizing their own bodies, or undergoing men’s visual scrutiny of their bodies all prompt self-objectification, which increases negative emotions such as body shame, appearance anxiety, and self-disgust (e.g., Aubrey, 2007; Calogero, 2004; Gapinski et al., 2003; Roberts & Gettman, 2004).

Self-objectification also disrupts concentration and interferes with cognitive performance. This was first demonstrated in the now classic “that swimsuit becomes you” research (Fredrickson et al., 1998). In one of these studies, male and female college students were first asked to try on and evaluate either a swimsuit or a sweater. Then, wearing the particular garment while alone in a makeshift dressing room, they completed a short math test. Men were unaffected by what they were wearing, but women who were wearing the swimsuit were drawn to monitoring their appearance and consequently performed worse than if they were wearing a sweater.

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Women who are particularly susceptible to such self-objectification experience frequent shame. The more shame they feel, the more vulnerable they are to disordered eating, depression, and sexual dysfunction (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). These effects of self-objectification have likely contributed to the obsession with weight that has led 73% of American women to make some serious effort at some point to lose weight, compared with only 55% of men (Saad, 2011).

Stereotype Threat

Self-fulfilling prophecies and self-stereotyping are examples of how stereotypes affect behavior of members of stereotyped groups during social interactions. Other research shows that even when a person is not interacting with someone, the immediate context can bring to mind stereotypes about his or her group, and this can interfere with the person’s ability to perform at their best. This was the discovery made by the Stanford researchers Claude Steele and Joshua Aronson (1995) when they conducted pioneering work on what they called stereotype threat, a phenomenon you were first introduced to in chapter 1 when we covered research methods.

Stereotype threat is the concern that one might do something to confirm a negative stereotype about one’s group either in one’s own eyes or the eyes of someone else. Although this phenomenon has far-reaching consequences for a variety of situations, it has been studied primarily as an explanation for long-standing group differences in performance. For example, stereotype threat partly accounts for lower standardized-test scores among Blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans than for their White and Asian peers, and for why women perform less well than men on tests of mathematical ability. Traditional research has focused on whether nature (genetics, hormones, even brain size) or nurture (upbringing, educational values, access to educational resources) offers a better explanation of these performance gaps (Nisbett, 2009). Research on stereotype threat takes a different and distinctly social psychological view of this problem, noting that performance can be influenced by aspects of the situation, such as the person’s experience of the classroom in which he or she is taking a test. Steele and Aronson (1995) gave Black and White undergraduates a challenging set of verbal problems to solve. The researchers varied only one thing. For half of the sample, the problems were described as a diagnostic test of verbal intelligence (the type of thing you might think when you take the SAT or GRE). For the other half, the same problems were described as a simple lab exercise. Although White students were unaffected by how the task was described, Black students performed significantly worse when the task was presented as a diagnostic test of intelligence (see FIGURE 11.2). They were also more likely to have stereotypes about race activated in their minds. So a single, rather small detail—how the task was framed—made a big difference. When Black students were reminded of the stereotype that their group is intellectually inferior, they performed more poorly on the test.

In addition to undermining performance on tests of math, verbal, or general intellectual ability of minorities, women, and those of lower socioeconomic status (Croizet & Claire, 1998), stereotype threat has also been shown to impair memory performance of older adults (Chasteen et al., 2005); driving performance of women (Yeung & von Hippel, 2008); athletes’ performance in the face of racial stereotypes (Stone et al., 2012); men’s performance on an emotional sensitivity task (Leyens et al., 2000); and women’s negotiation skills (Kray et al., 2001).

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Stereotype threat is more likely to impair performance under some conditions than others (Schmader et al., 2008). The effect is strongest when:

the stigmatized identity is made salient in the situation (e.g., being the only women in a high-level math class).

that identity is chronically salient, due to high stigma consciousness or high identification with the group.

the task is characterized as a diagnostic measure of an ability for which one’s group is stereotyped as being inferior (as in Steele & Aronson, 1995).

individuals are led to believe their performance is going to be compared with that of members of the group stereotyped as superior on the task.

individuals are explicitly reminded of the stereotype.

Researchers also have learned a great deal about the processes that contribute to the deleterious effects of stereotype threat. First, it’s important to point out that those who care the most about being successful feel stereotype threat most acutely (Steele, 1997). You have to be invested in doing well to be threatened by the possibility that you might not. In fact, it’s partly because people are trying so hard to prove the stereotype wrong that their performance suffers (Jamieson & Harkins, 2007). When situations bring these stereotypes to mind, anxious thoughts and feelings of self-doubt are more likely to creep in (Bosson et al., 2004; Cadinu et al., 2005; Johns et al., 2008; Spencer et al., 1999). Efforts to push these thoughts away and to stay focused on the task can hijack the very same cognitive resources that people need to do well on tests and in other academic pursuits (Johns et al., 2008; Logel et al., 2009; Schmader et al., 2008). For other kinds of activities (such as trying to sink a golf putt, shoot a basket, or parallel park), becoming proficient means relying on skills that have become automatic over hours if not years of practice. When the situation reminds people of a negative group stereotype about those activities, they end up scrutinizing the behaviors that they normally do automatically; as a result, they trip themselves up (Schmader & Beilock, 2011).

Just as some people see their performance suffer in the face of negative stereotypes, others can get a boost in performance from reminders that they are positively stereotyped (Rydell et al., 2009; Shih et al., 2002; Walton & Cohen, 2003), a phenomenon known as stereotype lift. One caveat, however, is that when these positive stereotypes are communicated directly and explicitly (“Oh, you should do well on this math test because you’re Asian”), people can also choke under the pressure of having to live up to such high expectations (Cheryan & Bodenhausen, 2000; Shih et al., 2002).

Social Identity Threat

Research on stereotype threat reveals that it’s mentally taxing to cope with situations that communicate to you that you are incompetent. A more general version of this threat is called social identity threat, the feeling that your group simply is not valued in a domain and that you do not belong there (Steele et al., 2002). As a result, those who try to enter and excel in areas where their group has traditionally been underrepresented find themselves trying to juggle their various identities. For example, women who go into male-dominant domains find themselves having to suppress their more feminine qualities (Pronin et al., 2004; von Hippel et al., 2011). A minority student who does excel in academics can be accused of being an “Uncle Tom” or of “acting White” (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986).

On the one hand, repeated exposure to stereotype threat and social identity threat can eventually lead to disidentification, which occurs when people no longer feel that their performance in a domain is an important part of themselves, and they stop caring about being successful (Steele, 1997). This can be a serious problem if, for example, minority children disidentify with school. In fact, being the target of negative stereotypes can steer people away from certain opportunities in the first place.

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For example, although women continue to be underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math compared with men, FIGURE 10.4 (PhDs Earned by Women) in the previous chapter revealed that their numbers have been steadily increasing over time. In the one exception to this trend, the number of women entering computer science has actually been decreasing over the past two decades. Research suggests why this might be: Students have a very specific stereotype of what a computer scientist is like, and women are much more likely than men to think that it isn’t like them. In one study, women expressed far less interest in majoring in computer science when they completed a survey in a computer scientist’s office filled with reminders of the computer-geek stereotype than did those who completed the same questionnaire in a room that did not reinforce the conventional stereotype of computer scientists (Cheryan et al., 2009). The take-away message is that even when the doors are open for women and minorities to apply and enter certain fields, the situations themselves can still communicate subtle messages that make underrepresented groups feel that they simply wouldn’t fit in there.

Given the severity of consequences associated with the existence of cultural stereotypes as well as perceiving and being the victim of prejudice, how should a targeted individual respond? People react in quite a number of ways. Some are specifically focused on protecting oneself from stereotype threat. Others focus on ameliorating other negative consequences of prejudice. Interestingly, one review of the literature revealed surprisingly little evidence that people stigmatized based on race, ethnicity, physical disability, or mental illness report lower levels of self-esteem than those who are not normally stigmatized (Crocker & Major, 1989). This seems to run counter to common sense, and to many of the theories we’ve covered in this book, which suggest that people’s self-esteem is influenced by how others treat them.

So how do people who are devalued by society in general minimize these hits to self-esteem and remain resilient in the face of stigmatization? Research has revealed some strategies for mitigating stereotype concerns as well as coping skills that targets use to protect their self-esteem and overall sense of well-being against the daily jabs of prejudice. Let’s look at a few, starting with strategies that are particularly applicable to being stereotyped and then moving to the broader experience of being the target of prejudice. Of course, as is so often the case, sometimes the solutions open the door to other problems as well.

Combating Stereotype and Social Identity Threat

We’ve reviewed the powerful role that prejudice and negative stereotypes can play in shaping behavior, self-perceptions, performance, and career preferences. But fortunately, research has also pointed to several ways in which these processes can be eliminated. These findings have important implications for educational and social policies.

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Identification with Role Models

One set of strategies is aimed at changing or reducing the stereotype itself. When individuals are exposed to role models—people like them who have been successful—the stereotype is altered and they feel inspired to do well (Dasgupta & Asgari, 2004; Stout et al., 2011; Marx & Roman, 2002; McIntyre et al., 2003). In one study (Stout et al., 2011), college students were randomly assigned to either a female or a male calculus professor, and their performance over the course of the semester was tracked. The gender of the professor had no effect on men’s attitudes or behavior. But women with a female professor participated more in class over the course of the semester and became more confident in their ability to do well.

Reappraisal of Anxiety

When stereotypes are difficult to change, targets can reinterpret what the stereotypes mean. For example, often, when people think that they are stereotyped to do poorly, they are more likely to interpret difficulties and setbacks as evidence that the stereotype is true and that they do not belong. They perform better, though, if they reinterpret difficulties and setbacks as normal challenges faced by anyone. In one remarkable study, minority college students who read testimonials about how everyone struggles and feels anxious when beginning college felt a greater sense of belonging in academics, did better academically, and were less likely to drop out of school (Walton & Cohen, 2007, 2011). Similarly, instructions to reappraise anxiety as a normal part of test-taking improves women’s and minorities’ performance, effects that can persist even months later when students take an actual high-stakes test such as the GRE (Jamieson et al., 2010; Johns et al., 2008). In fact, simply being able to interpret test anxiety as the result of stereotype threat improves women’s performance on a math test (Johns et al., 2005).

Self-affirmation

Another remarkably successful coping strategy is self-affirmation. Self-affirmation theory (for a refresher, see chapter 6) posits that people need to view themselves as good and competent. When they encounter a threat to their positive self-view in one area of life, they compensate by affirming other deeply held values. On the basis of this theory, we would expect that people who are reminded of their core values would be protected from the negative effects of stereotypes. This hypothesis was supported in a longitudinal study of middle-school students (Cohen et al., 2006; Cohen et al., 2009; Miyake et al., 2010). Students were assigned to write about either a personally cherished value or a value that others might care about but that was not central to their own lives. The researchers then tracked students’ grades. This simple affirmation task had no effect on White students’ academic performance. But Black students who affirmed their values were far less likely to earn low grades over the course of that semester. The positive effects on their academic performance persisted up to two years later (see FIGURE 11.3). Sometimes very simple psychological interventions can have very powerful effects on long-term outcomes.

Social Strategies for Coping With Prejudice and Discrimination

Just as there are a number of ways to counter the effects of stereotype threat, there are also a number of behavioral response options for dealing with interpersonal encounters with prejudice.

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Confrontation

Wanting to experience positive outcomes and to believe in fairness can make someone less likely to perceive discrimination. But even when people feel they have been the targets of biased attitudes or perceptions, they don’t always say that discrimination has occurred or do anything to confront the person responsible.

Consider the following scenario: You are working on a class project in small groups, and you have to take turns choosing what kinds of people you would want with you on a deserted island. One young man in the group consistently makes sexist choices. (“Let’s see, maybe a chef? No, one of the women can cook.”) Would you say anything to him? In a study that presented women with this scenario, most said they would confront the guy in some way, probably by questioning his choice or pointing out how inappropriate it is (Swim & Hyers, 1999). But when women were actually put in this situation, over half of them did nothing at all.

This “do-nothing effect” isn’t limited to targets put in the position of confronting an outgroup member. Similar silence has also been found in numerous studies in which White participants overheard a White confederate use a racial slur when referring to a Black confederate in the study (e.g., Greenberg & Pyszczynski, 1985b; Kawakami et al., 2009). Confronting those who express prejudice is a lot harder than we might imagine it to be. Being silent in these situations is particularly troubling because expressions of prejudice can rub off on the observer. In one study, White participants who heard a racial slur used to describe an African American became more negative in their evaluation of the person targeted by the slur, despite the fact that in debriefings, the participants reported being appalled by the remark (Greenberg & Pyszczynski, 1985b).

Why do racist and sexist remarks often go unchallenged? One reason is because those who do the confronting are often viewed negatively. When participants hear about a Black student who claims that his failing grade was the result of racial discrimination, they see him as a complainer (Kaiser & Miller, 2001). This kind of “blame the victim” reaction happens even when the evidence supports the student’s claim that discrimination actually occurred! In other research, when Whites were confronted with the possibility that they might be biased in their treatment of others, they did try to correct their biases in the future, but they also felt angry and tended to dislike the person who confronted them (Czopp et al., 2006). Even members of your own stigmatized group can be unsympathetic when you point to the role of discrimination in your outcomes (Garcia et al., 2005). These social costs can make it difficult to address bias when it does occur, particularly if you are the person targeted by the bias and in a position of relatively little power.

Despite the costs of confrontation, real social change requires it. This raises the question, are other options available that might get a similar message across but in a way that minimizes these costs? According to the target empowerment model, the answer is yes (Stone et al., 2011). This model suggests that targets of bias can employ strategies that deflect discrimination, so long as those actions aren’t perceived as confrontational. And even those that are confrontational can still be effective if they are preceded by a strategy designed to put a prejudiced person at ease.

Let’s illustrate how this model works. In post–9/11 America, Arab Americans have too often been targeted by stereotypic perceptions that they endorse or are involved in terroristic activities. In a 2010 poll, 41% of Arab Americans surveyed reported experiences of discrimination based on their ethnicity (Elshinnawi, 2010). If you are an Arab American, you understandably might want others to see your perspective on the world and appreciate how hurtful these misconceptions can be. However, when prejudiced White Americans were asked by an Arab American to take his perspective, they perceived him as confrontational, stereotyped him more negatively, and reported a decreased interest in getting to know him (Stone et al., 2011). But if he first asked White perceivers to think about something they value, thereby allowing them to self-affirm, his plea for empathy worked. By getting those who are highly prejudiced to reflect on their own values or positive attributes, targets can encourage majority members to take their point of view in a less threatening manner.

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When have you confronted someone who was biased against you or another person? What was the cost?

Compensation

Targets of prejudice also can cope with stigma by compensating for the negative stereotypes or attitudes they think other people have toward them. For example, when overweight women were making a first impression on a person and were led to believe that that person could see them (and thus knew their weight), they acted in a more extraverted way than if they were told that they could not be seen. They compensated for the weight-based biases they expected others to have by being extra-friendly. And it worked: those who thought they were visible were rated as friendlier by the person with whom they were interacting (Miller et al., 1995).

In a similar finding, Black college freshmen who expected others to have racial biases against them and their group reported spending more time disclosing information about themselves when talking with their White dormitory roommates (Shelton et al., 2005). Self-disclosure is a powerful way of establishing trust and liking, so it is not surprising that Black participants who self-disclosed a great deal were liked more by their White roommates.

Unfortunately, these kinds of compensation strategies can come with costs. In the study just mentioned, the Black participants who reported engaging in a lot of self-disclosure with a White roommate also reported feeling inauthentic in this relationship. Perhaps because they were trying to put their White roommates at ease, their efforts to compensate and find common ground left them feeling as if they had been wearing a mask of politeness rather than being true to themselves.

Another potential cost of compensation is that it can disrupt the smooth flow of social interaction. This is because the specific concerns that weigh on the mind of the target, and thus trigger their compensation, might be quite different than what weighs on the mind of the perceiver (Bergsieker et al., 2010; Shelton & Richeson, 2006). For people who belong to the more advantaged group, interactions with outgroup members can bring to mind concerns about appearing prejudiced (Vorauer et al., 1998). Assuming that they would prefer that they and their group were not seen as prejudiced jerks, we might expect them to be motivated to ingratiate themselves with others in order to come across as likeable. Thus, they will likely try to come across as warm and open, while also being careful to not let any biases pervade their judgment.

For people who belong to the disadvantaged group, the concerns for the interaction can be quite different. If you take the often-studied case of interracial interactions, a Black student having an initial conversation with her new White roommate might be most concerned about being stereotyped as incompetent. She might fear that her roommate will ask her questions that presume that she is less academically motivated or capable. To compensate for this stereotype, her impression-management goal might be to self-promote in order to boost perceptions of competence. The problem with this scenario is that interactions tend to go more smoothly when people’s impression-management goals are a match or complementary in some way. If one person cracks jokes to show how warm and likeable she is while the other wants to have an intellectual conversation to bolster her perceived competence, each party might walk away from the interaction feeling a bit misunderstood and disconnected from the other. And as if this is not enough of a cost, both might feel a bit cognitively exhausted from the added effort of it all (Richeson et al., 2003; Richeson & Shelton, 2003; Richeson & Trawalter, 2005).

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The Benefits of Group Identification

At the other end of the spectrum from concealment is creating and celebrating a shared identity with others who are similarly stigmatized. It’s long been known that people benefit in extraordinary ways from receiving social support from others. Such support can be most helpful when it comes from someone who has “been there” and has gone through the same experience. Earlier we mentioned that those who report encountering frequent or ongoing discrimination show signs of psychological distress. But according to rejection identification theory, the negative consequences of being targeted by discrimination can be offset by a strong sense of identification with your stigmatized group (Branscombe et al., 1999; Postmes & Branscombe, 2002).

The old adage that there is safety in numbers applies not only to physical protection but to a less tangible sense of symbolic protection as well. Although pride in one’s ethnic identity is likely supported by one’s family and social circle, often such support is less readily available for those with stigmatizing identities such as homosexuality, physical deformity, and obesity. In such cases, even parents, siblings, and friends may reject the stigmatizing identity. That is why gay pride and similar movements can be so critical to a feeling of social support.

If there are psychological benefits of banding with similar others to cope with prejudice, it is easier to understand why people often self-segregate into neighborhoods, career choices, and separate areas of the cafeteria. But we also live in a unique time: It is now possible to find similar others online without ever meeting them face to face or even being on the same continent. The opportunity to make social contact is likely to be extremely beneficial for those suffering from rare genetic conditions such as dwarfism (Fernández et al., 2012) or commonly concealed stigmatizing conditions such as mental illness. Modern communications and ease of travel made it possible for the men who were once judged the tallest (Bao Xishun, 7′9″) and the shortest (He Pingping, 2′4″) on earth to meet and share their experiences of being so extremely different from the norm. We still have much more to learn about the value of online social media in helping to build and foster support networks that give a sense of psychological security to those who often are marginalized in their daily lives.

Psychological Strategies for Coping With Prejudice and Discrimination

The social strategies discussed above offer examples of how those who are stigmatized can manage their interpersonal interactions in ways that minimize their experience of bias and discrimination. Because people experience discrimination and bias in society at large as well as in interpersonal interactions, a host of psychological strategies are directed toward helping people remain resilient in the face of social devaluation.

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Discounting

As we mentioned earlier, the dilemma of modern-day prejudice is that it can be so subtle. Consider an instance in which a woman is passed over for a promotion in favor of a male colleague. Is that discrimination? Or is she simply less qualified? It’s often quite difficult if not impossible to know, a situation that puts those who are targeted by bias in a state of attributional ambiguity (Crocker et al., 1991). Crocker and her colleagues point out that the upside of attributing a negative outcome to prejudice is that it allows one to shift blame onto the biases of others and escape the negative feelings that might otherwise result. For example, if the woman in the example can dismiss the boss who rejected her as a sexist bigot, then she can maintain her opinion of herself as competent and intelligent. For instance, in one experiment, when Black college students learned that a White student was not that interested in becoming friends with them, their self-esteem was reduced when they didn’t think the other person knew their race but was buffered when they believed their race was known (Crocker et al., 1991).

You might be wondering how perceiving discrimination can sometimes be psychologically beneficial after we outlined all of its negative consequences. First, attributing an isolated incident to prejudice might buffer self-esteem from negative outcomes, but perceiving that discrimination is pervasive can be harmful to well-being (Eliezer et al., 2010; McCoy & Major, 2003; Schmitt et al., 2003). Second, acknowledging that prejudice exists can reduce the shock when it happens to you. In one set of studies, women and minorities who generally believed that the world is fair (compared with those who didn’t) showed a higher physiological threat response when they met and interacted with someone who was prejudiced against their group (Townsend et al., 2010).

People can also protect their self-esteem more effectively by claiming discrimination when they can be certain that discrimination did occur (Major et al., 2003). But when people blame themselves for their stigmatizing condition in the first place, they get no comfort from being the target of bias. When overweight female college students learned that a man wasn’t interested in meeting them, they felt worse, not better, if they thought their weight played a factor in his evaluation (Crocker et al., 1993). Because society perceives weight as something that can be controlled, these women felt responsible for being rejected.

Devaluing

Another coping strategy that people turn to in dealing with discrimination is to devalue those areas of life where they face pervasive experiences of prejudice and discrimination. If you decide that you really don’t care about working on a naval submarine, then you might be relatively unaffected by the U.S. Navy’s long-standing ban (not repealed until 2010) on women serving on submarines. By the same token, getting bad grades in school might carry little weight in how you see yourself if academics take a backseat to your social calendar.

When people fail, fear rejection, or are excluded from a domain or type of activity, they can quite easily devalue that domain. This might be part of the reason that women are less likely to pursue advanced degrees in science and engineering. The tendency to devalue those areas where your group doesn’t excel seems like a pretty effective strategy for managing bad outcomes. But the whole story is more complicated. It turns out that it is not so easy to devalue those domains in which higher-status groups are more accomplished. For example, on learning that women score higher on a new personality dimension described only by the name surgency, men readily devalue this trait as something that is not important to them personally (Schmader et al., 2001). But when women learn that men score higher in surgency, they assume that this trait is at least as valuable as when women possess it. Humans have a basic tendency to look up to those who are better off—to admire their style, covet their possessions, and aspire to take on their traits. This means that even when we repeatedly experience more negative outcomes while trying to advance our status in an area, we can find it difficult to devalue that domain.

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These pressures can leave people with a difficult choice: Continue to strive for success in arenas where they are socially stigmatized because these are the domains that society considers important or call into question the very legitimacy of that society by devaluing those domains (e.g., making the decision to drop out of school). For example, although Black and Latino college students get lower grades on average than their White and Asian peers, they report valuing education at least as much if not more (Major & Schmader, 1998; Schmader et al., 2001). However, those who regard the ethnic hierarchy in the United States as unfair and illegitimate are more likely to call into question the value and utility of getting an education (Schmader et al., 2001). If the deck is stacked against you, you might very well decide to leave the game.

Devaluing one area of life may help mitigate a setback in that area. How do groups cope with the perception that persistent discrimination creates multiple, insurmountable barriers to their success, from inferior schooling to glass-ceiling effects in the workplace? One extreme form of devaluing is to create a group identity that opposes the majority group and its characteristic behaviors, ideas, and practices, in what is labeled an oppositional culture (Ogbu & Simons, 1998). For example, ethnic minority students (e.g., African Americans, Mexican Americans, Native Americans) may consider doing well in school or conforming to school rules as “acting White” (Fordham & Ogbu, 1986). When students engage in these “White” behaviors, they may face opposition from their peers and from other members of the minority community. They may respond by identifying with their peers’ oppositional culture and consequently devaluing any behavior or goal that seems to represent the majority culture. For example, some Black students may not put their best effort into school-related activities, or they even avoid school altogether. This strategy can increase their sense of belonging in the oppositional culture, but it also can lead them to reject opportunities for self-improvement and economic success simply because they don’t want to resemble the majority culture.

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