Group identity-based self-protective strategies: the stigma of race, gender, and garlic

We examine the importance of group membership in stigma and its role in the e€ectiveness 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 e€ectiveness when stigma has a basis in group membership. Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Early self theories suggested that self-esteem was based on experience and re ̄ected information from the social world about social acceptance, moral value, and personal accomplishments (see Shrauger & Schoeneman, 1979, for a review). Over the past several decades, the early theories have been shown to be over-simpli®ed, limited, and, in some cases, simply wrong. One way in which these theories' predictions have Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 23 December 1998 Accepted 8 August 1999 European Journal of Social Psychology Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 30, 355±381 (2000) *Correspondence to: Christian Crandall, Department of Psychology, 426 Fraser Hall, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA. e-mail: [email protected] failedÐin a rather spectacular wayÐis that people who live with signi®cant social stigmas do not su€er from a negative sense of self, despite what their cultures might say about their individual social value (Crocker & Major, 1989). Although stigmatized people su€er from a variety of social indignities (Go€man, 1963; Stangor & Crandall, in press; Wright, 1960, 1983), many people with signi®cant, visible, and socially important stigmas do not su€er from low self-esteem or a negative sense of identity. Crocker and Major's (1989) essay described the healthy self-esteem of stigmatized individuals and the reasons for the lack of esteem de®cit; their theory has had a strong in ̄uence on subsequent research and theorizing. They argue that several selfprotective cognitions provide a bu€er from the negative social information individuals receive, and that these strategies are responsible for protecting their self-esteem from the negative e€ects of personal discrimination based on stigma. In contrast, we propose that mistreatment by an unstigmatized person can make salient a group membership that, although stigmatizing, is important and self-relevant, and this group salience is the actual force underlying the e€ectiveness of self-protective cognitions. SELF-PROTECTIVE STRATEGIES Crocker and Major suggested three strategies that help preserve high levels of selfesteem: (1) attributing negative feedback to prejudice against one's group, (2) limiting social comparison to ingroupmembers, and (3) selectively devaluing those dimensions on which the group stereotypically fairs poorly. For example, a businesswoman who receives negative feedback about her leadership skills from her male colleague might attribute this feedback to his sexist attitudes. Similarly, the businesswoman might decide that, although the feedback she received was negative, it was more positive than feedback given to other female employees at the company. Or she could decide that leadership skills aren't that important anyway. In each instance, the individual's selfesteem is protected from the blow that would be received by the negative feedback through the reinterpretation of damaging information. In all three cases, a cognitive strategy is used to undermine the information value of the negative feedback. Evidence for the use of these strategies has been found in the laboratory. For example, physically attractive women were given positive feedback on an essay from an opposite sex partner who was `romantically unattached but looking', who could either see the participant or not (Major, Carrington, & Carnevale, 1984). The attractive participants discounted the feedback when they were seen, as compared to when they were not seen. Similarly, women who received negative feedback from a sexist evaluator reported less depressive a€ect than women receiving negative feedback from someone who was not sexist (Crocker, Voelkl, Testa, & Major, 1991). However, the expected bu€ering e€ects with self-esteem were not found. Self-protective Strategies Sometimes Fail Sometimes the strategies that protect self-esteem are also directly responsible for lowering it. Crocker, Cornwell, and Major (1993) found that overweight women who 356 Christian S. Crandall et al. Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 30, 355±381 (2000) were rejected by a potential dating partner were more likely to attribute this negative feedback to their weight when compared both to overweight women who were not rejected, and normal weight women. Although they attributed the negative outcome to their stigma, they did not make attributions to prejudice. Crocker et al. (1993) explained these results by pointing to the perceived controllability of the stigma of weightÐparticipants blamed their own stigma, but as part and parcel, they also blamed themselves. Not surprisingly, these overweight women had more negative a€ect and lower self-esteem. We suggest that the lack of success of the self-protective cognitions may not be self-perceived responsibility, but rather, fat people do not serve as a self-identifying reference group (see Crandall, 1994, for evidence on this point). It may be that the attack on self-esteem was not fended o€ because of a lack of meaningful group membership on the part of overweight women, and not perceived controllability. Crocker et al. (1993) is the only study in this tradition to look at members of a stigmatized group who are not well identi®ed with their group. Other studies have been done with members of relatively unstigmatized groups. Britt and Crandall (in press) compared the responses to negative feedback of African±American participants (who tend to be relatively well identi®ed as `Blacks') and European±American participants (who tend to be relatively poorly identi®ed as `Whites'). Britt and Crandall (in press) presented both African±American participants and European± American participants with positive or negative feedback on an essay-writing task. Both groups vigorously discounted negative feedback. However, discounting was related to higher levels of self-esteem for African±American participants, but was only slightly related to self-esteem for European±Americans. Harvey and Crandall (submitted) found similar stigmatized-group e€ects with respect to devaluing when comparing Native±Americans with European±Americans. Both groups devalued a test more after receiving negative than positive feedback, showing that the self-protective cognition was available to them. However, only Native±American participants experienced an increase in self-esteem when told that the test was biased against them; no such self-esteem e€ect was found with European± Americans. Thus, although heavyweight women and European±Americans might use self-protective cognitions, use of these strategies is not associated with higher selfesteem. The kinds of self-protective strategies that Crocker and Major (1989) reviewed are simple, straightforward, and cognitive methods of reducing the impact of negative feedback. The studies outlined above provide substantial evidence from several di€erent labs that, in the face of negative evaluations, people engage in exactly the strategies Crocker and Major (1989) delineate. However, there exists little evidence to suggest that these cognitions are successful in directly protecting self-esteem. THE IMPORTANCE OF GROUP MEMBERSHIP We propose that although negative feedback can cause stigmatized individuals to engage in methods of self-protection, only when individuals have meaningful, groupbased stigmas is there a relationship between self-esteem and the use of self-protective cognitions (Britt & Crandall, in press; Harvey & Crandall, submitted). In each Group identity-based self-protective strategies 357 Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 30, 355±381 (2000) example of self-protective strategies mentioned by Crocker and Major (1989), group membership is an essential component. For example, when making an attribution to prejudice against one's own group, the individual needs ®rst to consider oneself a member of a particular stigmatized group. Restricting social comparison to one's ingroup logically requires group membership to be salient. Finally, valuing the things that one's group does well in devaluing dimensions on which the group does poorly both entail thinking about one's group membership. Although the importance of group membership is implicit in Crocker and Major's (1989) review of self-protective strategies, we suggest that the e€ectiveness of these strategies is rooted in their association with an identity-relevant group membership. We propose that the reason why these strategies were not e€ective for overweight women and European±Americans is that these two categories of people do not identify themselves with a meaningful group. Although groups are forming to ®ght for civil rights and respect for overweight individuals, many people may be hesitant to identify themselves with overweight individuals as a group, possibly because they hope to escape membership in such a group in the future. In the case of European± Americans, being members of the majority ethnic group may keep them from thinking of themselves as a meaningful group. Majority group members may not always be accustomed to thinking of themselves in terms of their group identity (Abrams & Hogg, 1988). If meaningful group membership is integral to the e€ectiveness of Crocker andMajor's (1989) self-protective strategies, then under most circumstances European±Americans would not bene®t from employing these strategies. However, individuals belonging to stigmatized groups such as African± Americans or women are reminded daily of their group identity. Stigmatization based on these meaningful group memberships may make that membership salient, thus protecting self-esteem. Hence it is possible that meaningful group membership is the driving force behind self-protective cognitions. Rather than raising self-esteem through external attributions, self-protective cognitions such as attributions to prejudice function to remind stigmatized individuals of their social identi®cation with their in-group. This reminder of a valued in-group raises the individual's self-esteem. Therefore, it may be mechanisms associated with social identi®cation (Oakes, Haslam, & Turner, 1994; Tajfel, 1981), not attribution, that function to preserve stigmatized individuals' selfesteem. Therefore, we predict that individuals faced with prejudice on the basis of a meaningless group membership will engage in self-protective cognitions, but not reap the self-esteem bu€ering rewards of these strategies. On the other hand, individuals reminded of a meaningful group membership should experience a preservation of selfesteem in the absence of the use of any attributional, self-protective strategies. OVERVIEW OF THE THREE EXPERIMENTS To test the roles of meaningful group membership and self-protective cognitions in bu€ering self-esteem, we report three studies that systematically varied the meaningfulness of group membership. Speci®cally, we were interested in two issues. First, we examined how di€erent kinds of stigmas and situations elicited di€erent 358 Christian S. Crandall et al. Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 30, 355±381 (2000) patterns of self-protective responses. Second, we examined the relationship between these self-protective cognitions and self-esteem: Are the cognitions sucient in themselves to bu€er self-esteem, or is a link to group membership necessary to make the strategies e€ective? In the ®rst experiment, we gave people an individualizing stigma that was devoid of plausible group identi®cation (bad breath). This allowed participants to engage in self-protective cognitions, but a€orded little access to the bene®ts of group membership. In a second experiment, we gave people a stigma that carried with it a group membership with which the participants could not reasonably identify (being a member of a di€erent race). Although group membership was central to this manipulation of stigma, the membership was not meaningful to the participants themselves, since they by de®nition were not members of the opposite race and therefore had low group identity with this race. In a third experiment, we created an experimental situation that turned a genuine, but often non-stigmatizing group membership (being female) into something stigmatizing in situ. In this experiment, we highlighted female group membership by the presence of a sexist evaluator, but we did not provide the participant an opportunity to attribute feedback to prejudice. This allowed us to see if making a meaningful group membership salientÐin and of itselfÐwould be enough to promote individuals' self-esteem. EXPERIMENT 1 GARLIC AND THE SINGLE MALE In the ®rst experiment, we give male participants an opportunity to avail themselves of the bene®ts of the social-cognitive strategies, by giving them a transient, novel, but non-group-based stigma: bad breath. Males engaged in a brief conversation with an attractive female, who then provided the participant with either positive, moderately negative, or very negative feedback about their suitability as a dating partner. Half of each group of participants ate a mint candy prior to interacting, the other half ate a clove of raw garlic. Because we were studying people who were newly stigmatized, with little experience in self-protective cognitions, we measured the simplest and most elemental form of attributional mechanismsÐdiscountingÐa process that is both cognitively and logically simple. Since at least as early as Freud (1915/1963), scholars have argued that denial of information is one of the most primitive and earliest learned defense mechanisms. This ensured that participants with little experience with stigmatization would have a realistic opportunity to express self-esteem-protective cognitions. We predict that men who have eaten garlic will discount a negative evaluation and attribute it to their breath signi®cantly more often than men who have eaten a mint. If the social-cognitive components of Crocker and Major's (1989) strategies are sucient to protect self-esteem, then we predict that when faced with negative feedback, the use of self-protective cognitions should lead men who have eaten garlic to have a higher level of self-esteem than men who have eaten a mint. In addition, if the attribution to the stigma (social-cognitive process) alone is e€ective to promote self-esteem, then we should ®nd a correlation between self-protective cognitions and self-esteem in the negative feedback conditions. However, if an identity-relevant Group identity-based self-protective strategies 359 Copyright # 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Eur. J. Soc. Psychol. 30, 355±381 (2000) group membership is necessary to protect self-esteem, then there should be no relationship between self-protective cognitions and self-esteem.