Invisibility of Social Privilege to Those Who Have It

Abstract

The U.S. faces deep social divides, with socially dominant and subordinate groups clashing over how much privilege the former enjoys and how much hardship the latter endures. These differences arise in part because privilege is invisible to those who have it. Dominant groups are hypocognitive of privilege, having more fragmentary and impoverished cognitive representations of what the concept is, relative to subordinate group members. Across 13 studies, this difference revealed itself in impaired performance on cognitive tasks involving privilege. Relative to those from subordinate groups (women, Black and Asian Americans, left-handers), dominant group members (men, White Americans, right-handers) needed more information about everyday behavior to recognize themes of discrimination, generated fewer examples of discrimination, and remembered fewer discriminatory instances from a questionnaire or videotaped talk. They also categorized instances of discrimination on a reaction time task more slowly. These cognitive performance deficits predicted group differences in beliefs about whether privilege and discrimination exist. Performance differences persisted whether privilege was framed as the absence of disadvantages or presence of advantages and whether discrimination was made salient or not. After watching a transgender woman describe discrimination experienced as a woman, both men and women showed increased awareness of male privilege and gender discrimination. Findings suggest that the invisibility of one's privilege need not solely reflect identity-defensive motivations, but may also stem from cognitive deficits in conceptual knowledge about privilege and discrimination.

Essays on Aggregation With Heterogeneous and Interacting Agents

“…Secondly, we find that the underprivileged place much higher weight on the global signal than the privileged, with much less noisy estimates. This is consistent with the empirical finding that the adversely affected part of the population is more interested in global information about the issue, as is also documented on the micro level within the empirical psychological literature (Wu 2021). Our results from calibrating the composite perception rule suggest that belief formation regarding intergroup inequality is based not only on local but also on global information.…”

An Exercise for Expanding Privilege Awareness Among Management Students and Faculty

“…These reactions are especially common among members of dominant groups who have not yet begun the process of understanding and detangling their privilege. Facilitators can prepare for these emotional responses (Spelman, 2010) by further educating themselves about common reactions to privilege awareness (e.g., Dottolo, 2019;Phillips & Lowery, 2020;Wu, 2021) as well as strategies for responding to "hot moments" in the classroom (University of Michigan Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, n.d.). These strategies are also appropriate and necessary to help facilitators manage their own emotional responses when analyzing their own privilege and helping others do the same.…”

“…Often, social issues gain the attention of the public when it is the privileged who agitate for social change (Scully et al, 2018). However, this is difficult because people with greater power are less able to critically reflect on their privilege (Wu, 2021) without growing defensive (Phillips & Lowery, 2020). To that point, management educators in the U.S., for example, are disproportionately White, male, economically secure, and able to access intergenerational/private wealth (Minefee et al, 2018).…”

“…In our view, our privilege as business faculty precludes many of us from learning about our privilege and the experiences of people and communities to which we do not belong, a phenomenon that Phillips and Lowery (2020) describe as "motivated denial." One key feature of holding privilege is a tendency and motivation to deny, disregard, and/or conceal one's privilege (e.g., Phillips & Lowery, 2020;Wu, 2021); therefore, it requires intentional self-reflection to recognize one's privilege. Thus, we need specific frameworks, such as reflexive pedagogical tools (Iszatt-White et al, 2017), to confront our own privilege and guide our students to do the same.…”

Hide a Dagger Behind a Smile: A Review of How Collectivistic Cultures Compete More Than Individualistic Cultures

“…Without a societally established framework for a concept, people tend not to form associations around that concept (Levy, 1973;Wu & Dunning, 2018a, 2018b. Nor can they readily recognize, identify, interpret, or remember instances and behaviors related to that concept (Wu & Dunning, 2019, 2021bWu, 2021).…”