Chronic targets of prejudice minimize rather than exaggerate their own victimization

Evidence

Contemporary scholars question Allport’s assumption that chronic targets of prejudice are “hypersensitive” to prejudice, and suggest instead that targets often minimize or deny the extent to which they are targets of prejudice (see Major, Quinton, & Schmader, 2002, for a review). Consistent with this latter view, many studies find that women and ethnic minorities see less discrimination directed against themselves personally than they do against members of their group (e.g., Crosby, 1984). This discrepancy is reliable across a variety of groups (see Taylor, Wright, & Porter, 1994, for a review). Women and ethnic minorities also often have difficulty recalling times when they were targets of prejudice (Stangor et al., 2003), avoid labeling negative treatment as discrimination, even when the treatment legally qualifies as such (Magley, Hulin, Fitzgerald, & DeNardo, 1999), and fail to recognize when they are interacting with a highly prejudiced (vs. low-prejudiced) partner, even though they feel greater discomfort when interacting with the former (Vorauer & Kumhyr, 2001). Furthermore, when placed in similar situations (e.g., rejection by an outgroup under ambiguous circumstances), members of stigmatized groups are no more likely than members of nonstigmatized groups to attribute their rejection to prejudice (Major, Quinton, & McCoy, 2002). Collectively, these findings are inconsistent with Allport’s claim that targets of prejudice are hypersensitive to prejudice directed against themselves. — John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, Laurie A. Rudman, On the Nature of Prejudice, 945

Categorization

• XREF: Relates to ‘attributional ambiguity’ research and to the broader psychological literature on self-serving biases and motivated perception; connects to work on the ‘personal/group discrimination discrepancy.’ — connects to: Digressive victimhood deflects discrimination accusations onto an unrelated topic — Felix Danbold, Ivuoma N. Onyeador, and Miguel M. Unzueta, Dominant groups support digressive…, 24; Preference for digressive over competitive victimhood persists beyond general conservative ideology. — Felix Danbold, Ivuoma N. Onyeador, and Miguel M. Unzueta, Dominant groups support digressive…, 60; the MOC “The False Compass: How Racial Categories Reorder Bodies, Minds, and the Self”
• QUESTION: Why do stigmatized individuals systematically downplay personal discrimination they acknowledge for their group — what adaptive function does this serve?