Attributing failures to prejudice can be psychologically protective or harmful depending on scope.

Evidence

Branscombe and her colleagues (1999) have proposed Rejection-Identification Theory to account for the dual role that perceiving discrimination can have on psychological well-being. Consistent with Crocker and Major’s (1989) theorizing, they find that positive effects of attributing outcomes to prejudice are found if the outcome is discrete or situationally specific, whereas adverse psychological responses are likely when discrimination is enduring and pervasive (see also Taylor & Turner, 2002). Nevertheless, even the adverse effects of pervasive discrimination are not inevitable. The potential negative psychological impact of pervasive discrimination can be mitigated by diverse coping strategies, such as by strengthening ingroup identification (Leonardelli & Tormala, 2003) or, alternatively, by disidentifying with one’s group (McCoy & Major, 2003). — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 1069

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces Rejection-Identification Theory and its central claim that discrete vs. pervasive discrimination attributions cut opposite ways psychologically.
• XREF: The opposite-valenced coping strategies (strengthening vs. disidentifying with ingroup) echo Coleman’s social capital work on closure and the costs of group embeddedness.