Stigmatized people protect self-esteem by unlinking it from prejudiced feedback.

Evidence

Withdrawal of effort is likely to be one byproduct of psychologically disengaging self-esteem from a domain (Major et al., 1998). Psychological disengagement refers to detaching self-esteem from external feedback in a domain such that feelings of self-worth are not dependent on successes or failures in that domain (Major et al., 1998). One method of disengaging self-esteem from a domain is to discount the validity of feedback received in that domain; a second method is to devalue or reduce the importance in one’s self-concept of a domain in which one is stigmatized. … Consistent with this process, African Americans’ self-esteem is affected less than that of European Americans by feedback on intelligence tests when race is salient, but not when it is not salient (Major et al., 1998). — , Rudman, Laurie A - On the Nature of…, 966

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines psychological disengagement — detaching self-esteem from external feedback in a domain.
• XREF: Connects to self-protection and coping literatures in stigma research.