Members of stigmatized groups face chronic ambiguity between discrimination and personal failure causes

Evidence

Members of disadvantaged groups are often placed in a dilemma concerning how to interpret an unwanted result. For instance, a woman who has just received a rejection letter after applying for job may wonder whether this can be a case of gender discrimination. On the other hand, she would also need to know, for the purpose of adjustments, whether or not the true reason of the failure had anything to do with her personal attributes such as her lack of abilities or having taken the wrong strategy. This “attributional ambiguity” can be a major source of psychological distress among members of a stigmatized group, including lowered self-esteem, pessimism, and reactions from others as hypersensitive (Major & Crocker, 1993). A theoretically important question arises as to whether attribution to discrimination should be viewed as an internal or external cause. Also, it is an empirical question regarding how it is actually viewed by Categorization-Based Versus Person-Based Explanations of Behaviors • 15 ordinary people. — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 126

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 126