Covering up what can't be seen: Concealable stigma and mental control.

Abstract

In these studies the authors examined the effects of concealing a stigma in a social interaction relevant to the stigma. An interview paradigm called for undergraduate female participants who either did or did not have eating disordered characteristics to play the role of someone who did or did not have an eating disorder (ED) while answering stigma-relevant questions. The data suggest that the participants who concealed their stigmas become preoccupied with the control of stigma-relevant thoughts. In Study 1, participants with an ED who role-played not having an ED exhibited more secrecy, suppression, and intrusive thoughts of their ED and more projection of ED-related thoughts onto the interviewer than did those with an ED who role-played someone with an ED or those without an ED who role-played someone without an ED. This finding was replicated in Study 2, and the authors found both increasing accessibility of ED-related words among those participants with concealed stigmas during the interview and high levels of accessibility following the interview.

The Effects of Concealing Academic Achievement Information on Adolescents’ Self-Concept

“…The preoccupation model of secrecy suggests that the first step of keeping a secret is to suppress secret-related thoughts (Lane & Wegner, 1995). Previous literature based on this model contains items for measuring the suppression of the secret-related thoughts (e.g., Major & Gramzow, 1999;Smart & Wegner, 1999), and, accordingly, we created the item "During the interview, I try to restrain myself from thinking about what kind of student I am" to measure the suppression of participants' global self-representation. Participants were asked to rate the degree to which the item conforms to him-or herself from 1 (complete nonconformity) to 7 (complete conformity).…”

“…Researchers who have studied the effect of concealing information, such as that relating to abortion (Major & Gramzow, 1999), eating disorders, (Smart et al, 1999), and homosexuality (Ullrich, Lutgendorf, & Stapleton, 2003), were mainly conducted with adult participants. The current study extends this research theme to adolescents and enriched theoretical considerations for studying this type of phenomenon.…”

Is the Marlboro man the only alternative? The role of gender identity and self-construal salience in evaluations of male models

“…A useful avenue for future research to explore this result involves concealable stigma. Stigma involves some characteristic individuals possess, or are thought to possess, that conveys a social identity which is devalued in a particular social context (Smart and Wegner 1999). Frable, Platt and Hoey (1998) assert that concealable stigma effects may only have an effect when a person's social group membership is salient.…”

Prejudice, terrorism, and behavior therapy

“…Another method is to try to suppress negative thoughts directly (Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, 1987), internally scolding oneself for prejudicial words or concepts and trying to keep them out of mind. Doing so, however, makes these thoughts more frequent and more behaviorally impactful (Macrae, Bodenhausen, Milne, & Jetten, 1994;Smart & Wegner, 1999). For example, actively suppressing negative stereotypes results in more, not less, behavioral avoidance of stigmatized groups .…”