Ethnic stigma as a contextual experience: A focus on possible selves.

Abstract

Earlier research conceptualized stigma as self-hatred experienced across contexts. In contrast, this dissertation conceptualizes stigma as an experience evoked in social contexts in which one expects to possibly suffer a discrediting judgment. Results of Study One showed that when the interpersonal context was unspecified, college students of color did not view themselves any more negatively than European-American students. However, two experimental studies demonstrated that envisioning particular contexts may evoke expectations of feeling stigmatized in those contexts. Students of color and European-American students envisioned interacting with a teaching assistant (TA) of either the same or different ethnic background. In the first experiment, students' role relative to the TA was manipulated so that students believed (a) they were to evaluate the TA (dominant role) or (b) the TA was to evaluate them (subordinate role). It was expected that students of color would envision less positive possible selves when in a subordinate role to a European-American instructor than when in a subordinate to a same ethnicity TA, dominant position in general or European-American students in all conditions. Students of color were not sensitive to the role manipulation. There was a modest trend for European-American students to envision interacting more positively when subordinate to a same ethnicity TA or dominant to a different ethnicity TA. In the third study length of interaction with the prospective TA was manipulated so that students envisioned either a one-time interaction or a semester-long interaction. Length of the interaction was used as a proxy for the interaction's consequentialness. It was expected that students of color would have less positive possible selves when envisioning semester-long interaction with a European-American TA than when envisioning interaction with a same ethnicity TA or one-time interaction with a same ethnicity TA. When students of color envisioned interacting with a same ethnicity TA for a semester, they had a more positive set of possible selves than when they envisioned semester-long interaction with a European-American TA or one-time interaction in general. In contrast, when they envisioned semester-long interaction with a European-American TA, they envisioned a less positive set of possible selves than semester-long interaction with a same ethnicity TA or one-time interaction in general. Together these studies suggest that stigma does not reside in the self-concept but is a product of the social context.