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. 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
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.