Claiming-discrimination social costs are perceived as higher in front of strangers

Evidence

Indeed, a recent study by Asai and Karasawa (2009) revealed that members of a stigmatized group perceived the social cost associated with claiming discrimination to a greater extent when they were seen by a stranger rather than by a friend. … As I have repeated thus far, DPM was postulated for the understanding of impression formation processes. Yet, its emphasis on the importance of category-based information processes resonates with the fact that category-based explanations about the self can be internalized to as great an extent as the study of discrimination attribution has demonstrated. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 139

Categorization

• QUESTION: If stigma cost of claiming is audience-dependent, what happens in public adjudication venues where dominant-group strangers are the norm?
• CANDY: Stigmatized people weigh the price of crying discrimination more heavily before strangers than before friends — a compact, counterintuitive empirical nugget.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 139