The document discusses the impacts of stigma on various groups, including individuals with visible and hidden identities, highlighting how stigma affects social interactions, psychological well-being, and academic performance. It explains concepts like stereotype threat, social consequences of stigma, and management strategies for coping with social stigma. Additionally, it addresses the stigma surrounding mental illness, its consequences, and the importance of seeking treatment and support to mitigate its effects.

1. Chapters 5-9
Visibility Affects Stigma
⁃ Stigma visibility: how apparent a stigmatized identity is to
others and how difficult
is is to conceal from others
⁃ Hidden social flaws make people feel marginalized and
different
⁃ Associated with loneliness and social isolation
⁃ Visible stigmatized identities caught in a vicious cycle of
rejection and limited
opportunity
⁃ Affect social skills
Peril Affects Stigma
⁃ Stigma peril: the danger that other people associate with a
stigmatizing condition
⁃ Contagiousness
⁃ Avoid and exclude

2. ⁃ Perilous
Implications Of stigma for identity
⁃ Mindfulness: actively paying attention to the present
- Try to understand what others think of you
⁃ Try to understand the discrepancy between your self-concept
and how others
view you.
⁃ Stereotype Threat: Doubts that arise in one’s mind about
one’s own competence
and worthiness when faced with others negative beliefs about
ones character and
ability
⁃ Can be seen in many groups, including
⁃ Black students
⁃ Female
Stereotype Threat: Black Students
⁃ Feel anxious and vulnerable in school settings regarding their
teachers
assumptions about their ability

3. ⁃ Disengage with school
⁃ School performance drops
⁃ This confirms stereotypic beliefs about black students
Female students
⁃ Women are illogical and not intellectually suited for
scientific pursuits
⁃ Female students carry extra burden in math or engineering
⁃ Either master the material or run the risk of confirming what
others believe
⁃ Women are not good at math
⁃ Give up belief that they can achieve in math and science
domains
Stereotype Threat: Economically Disadvantaged students
⁃ Believed to be intellectually inferior and lazy
⁃ Burdens these students
⁃ Lowers their academic achievement
How does stereotype threat lower academic performance
⁃ Negative stereotypes…

4. ⁃ Reduce memory capacity
⁃ Cause anxiety and stress
⁃ Interfere with cognitive control and self regulation
Old Age Categorization and stereotyping
⁃ Intergeneration model of ageism
⁃ Generational conflict over the control of economic resources,
ambivalence around
succession of the current old (my parents) with the future old
(me)
⁃ Slow shift benevolent to hostile forms of ageism
⁃ Even older adults hold age stereotypes
⁃ People attribute memory lapses and other senior moments in
older people to
stable, dispositional causes
⁃ Similar behaviors I n younger people are attributed to more
changeable cures
⁃ Negative age related attitudes were higher among older
participants
⁃ Older adults characters in the media often are portrayed in a
stereotypical fashion

5. ⁃ Dependent, lonely, having physical and mental limitations
⁃ 2x as likely to be shown with a disability
⁃ Illness, injury, etc
⁃ More positively portrayed on daytime soap
Old Age Prejudice
⁃ The role of pity in old age prejudice
⁃ Declining health and loss of opportunities
⁃ The role of anxiety in old age prejudice
⁃ Reminds us of what will happen in our future
⁃ Anxiety leads to avoidance and more stereotyping of the
elderly, which in turn
produces more ignorance and negative emotions
⁃ The role of the threat…
Are old age stereotypes self fulfilling prophecies?
⁃ Negative age stereotypes are more impactful than negative
age facts
⁃ Age based stereotypes threat is driven by assumptions of
deficiency among
elders, rather than actual differences between older and younger

6. people
⁃ Internalization and self fulfilling prophecies
⁃ Old age stereotypes that incorporate assumptions of cognitive
decline and
memory loss have become a self fulfilling prophecy
⁃ Older adults with more negative beliefs about aging and
health (time 1) do less
adaptive coping around their own illness or injury
⁃ And subsequently, (time 2), have a poorer self rated overall
health
⁃ Becomes fulfillment of the original belief
⁃ Future old self
⁃ Reference for how they interpret their own aging and affects
their ongoing self
perceptions
Discrimination of older workers
⁃ Age discrimination is most commonly experienced by being
treated with less
respect and being assumed to be less intelligent.

7. ⁃ Highest in the lowest income groups
⁃ Age based discrimination can be legitimized and rationalized,
making it difficult to
challenge in court
⁃ Layoffs of older workers are preceded by a period of
harassment
⁃ Refusal or legitimate inability to perform such duties is used
to justify dismissal
⁃ The ADEA ( age discrimination in employment act)
illegalized age based work
place discrimination
⁃ It is more difficult for older adults to find employment than
younger adults.
⁃ Stereotyped as resistant to change, difficult to train, having
physical limitations
⁃ Younger workers given preference
⁃ Older workers take more temporary and part time jobs
⁃ Spend more time looking for work
⁃ Cut off from network of workplace social support

8. Notes
Classism: refers to negative stereotypes, prejudice, and
discriminatory behavior toward
poor people or people who are perceived to be poor.
⁃ Institutional classism
⁃ Interpersonal classism
Family status In the U.S
Divided by status, expectations, location and power
⁃ Working class
⁃ Middle class
⁃ Wealthy
Social class membership
⁃ Reliably predicts the degree to which one can obtain and
benefit from society
resources
⁃ Correlated with a wide array of life experiences
⁃ Mediates and influences what a person is likely to learn,
believe, anticipate and
seek after

9. Unequal access to resources
⁃ 40% of black children and more than 33% of nation children
living in poverty
(Fletcher, 2011)
⁃ National poverty rate: 16% (2021 census)
⁃ 60 million+households living just above the poverty line.
Coping with prejudice: Stigma management
⁃ Stigma management: individual strategies for coping with
social stigma
⁃ Strategies for:
⁃ Gaining social acceptance
⁃ Protecting psychological well-being
Strategies for gaining social Acceptance
⁃ Withdrawal: avoiding people who treat you stereotypically
⁃ Increase one’s acceptance and social opportunity
⁃ By associating with similarly stigmatized individuals
⁃ Social and political activism
⁃ Disadvantages:

10. ⁃ Physically and socially isolating
Strategies for gaining social acceptance
⁃ Passing: methods and strategies for concealing one’s
stigmatizing attribute or
condition from others
⁃ Advantages:
⁃ Acceptance, known as normal, full range social opportunities
⁃ Disadvantages:
⁃ Takes a lot of energy
⁃ Sense of disloyalty or divided loyalties
⁃ Capitalizing on stigma
⁃ Self-promotion: demonstrating to other people that you, as a
stigmatized person,
are multidimensional and competent in several domains
⁃ Advantages:
⁃ Proactively changes one’s virtual identity.
⁃ Allows others to see one’s positive strengths and attributes

11. ⁃ Compensation: stigmatized people deliberately presenting to
others behavior that
contradicts the assumptions held about their abilities or
character
⁃ Reshapes virtual identity, reduces…
Strategies for protecting psychological well-being
⁃ Attributing negative outcomes to prejudice
⁃ Stigmatized individuals chronically experience negative
events and receive
negative feedback from others
⁃ If due to prejudice—— protects self-esteem and self concept
⁃ Most effective when prejudice is very clear
⁃ Negative implications
⁃ Overuse may dismiss constructive criticism
⁃ May be seen as defensive and paranoid
⁃ Seen as complanainers
⁃ Devaluing negative outcome dimensions
⁃ “When you receive criticism in an area that is not important
to you, it doesn’t hurt

12. as much”
⁃ Stigmatized people experience more criticism and negative
experiences than
nonstigmatized people
⁃ Less likely to be able to change the outcome than non
stigmatized people
⁃ Disadvantages:
⁃ Simplifies one’s self concept, leaving stigmatizing person
fewer and more
vulnerable dimensions or abilities on which to base self esteem
⁃ Closes off potential avenues…
⁃ Making in-group
⁃ Making chronic comparisons with non stigmatized people
have negative
implications for the self-esteem of stigmatized individuals
Topics covered
⁃ The consequences of stigma for social interactions
⁃ The consequences of stigma for pshycological well being
⁃ The consequences of stigma for physical well-being
⁃ Strategies for coping with others prejudice

13. Social consequences of stigma
⁃ Stigmatized groups evoke negative emotions from others
⁃ stigmatized groups face rejection and avoidance from others
⁃ Non-stigmatized people are more uncomfortable than
stigmatized people when
interacting.
⁃ Minority group members have adapted more to interracial
interactions as a result
of encountering them more frequently
⁃ Stigma heightens both anxiety and stereotyping
Social consequences of stigma
⁃ Major social consequences of stigma:
⁃ Stigmatizing marks and conditions cause anxiety in others
such that interactions
with stigmatized people tend to be avoided or curtailed
⁃ People carefully monitor their behavior toward stigmatized
persons

14. ⁃ Stigma consciousness: the awareness that one is singled out
by others based on
an attribute that is negatively stereotyped.
⁃ Avoid tasks that heighten stigma
⁃ React defensively toward people who they believe hold
prejudices against them
⁃ Outcome depends on how stigmatized people cope
Psychological consequences of stigma
⁃ Self-concept:
⁃ Summary of one’s self-knowledge and consists of traits,
roles, and abilities.
⁃ Stigma could be reduced in two ways:
⁃ The virtual identity could be brought in line with the actual
self-views of those who
are stigmatized
⁃ Requires massive attitude-change for general public
⁃ Align one’s actual identity with ones virtual identity
Psychological Consequences of Stigma
⁃ Master status attribute: stigmatizing characteristics that all of
a persons other

15. abilities and qualities become subordinate to and colored by
⁃ Self fulfilling prophecy
⁃ Internalization
⁃ Self esteem
⁃ Our feelings of personal value, worthiness, competence
⁃ Associated with many mental health outcomes
⁃ Repeated interactions with others will cause stigmatized
people to become aware
of and internalize other’s negative appraisals of them
⁃ Denied opportunities to demonstrate personal competence
⁃ If a stigmatized person cannot use a defensive strategy in the
face of
discrimination, then self-esteem can suffer
Psychological distress
⁃ Discrimination can lead to depression and anxiety
⁃ Schmidt et al (2014)
⁃ Discrimination predicted increases in psychological distress
more than decreases
in self esteem

16. ⁃ Experiences depend on how visible or controlled the devalued
characteristic is
⁃ Children were more likely to have compromised
psychological well-being than
adults
The stigma of Mental illness
⁃ Alienated and seen as “others”
⁃ Perceived as dangerous
⁃ Seen as irresponsible or unable to make their own decisions
⁃ Less likely to be hired
⁃ Less likely to get safe housing
⁃ More likely to be criminalized than offered health care
services
⁃ Afraid of rejection to the point that they don’t always pursue
opportunities.
More harmful effects of stigma
⁃ Reluctance to seek help or treatment
⁃ Lack of understanding by family, friends, co-workers or
others

17. ⁃ Bullying, physical violence or harassment
⁃ Health insurance that doesn’t adequately cover mental illness
treatment
⁃ The belief that one will never succeed at certain challenges or
that one can’t
improve his/her situation
People with mental illness are discriminated for…
⁃ Their appearance
⁃ Poor social skills
⁃ Their diagnosis/label
⁃ When their mental illness is gender stereotyped-consistent
⁃ Males with substance abuse disorder related to alcohol
⁃ Females with depression
⁃ Rather than when their mental illness is gender stereotyped
inconsistent
⁃ Illness taken more seriously and seen as less under the
control of the person with
the illness
⁃ Female with substance abuse disorder related to alcohol

18. Treatment avoidance
⁃ About 58% of those who are seriously mentally ill recei ve
treatment for their
illness
⁃ Treatment avoidance is greatest among young adults with
mental illness, where
only 40% receive treatment
⁃ The large gap between those who need treatment and those
who seek it has been
explained by the stigma associated with mental illness
(corrigan, 2004)
Consequences of lack of treatment
⁃ Serious mental illness costs America $193.2 billion in lost
earnings per year.
⁃ Mood disorders, including major depression, dysthymic
disorder and bipolar
disorder, are the third most common cause of hospitalization in
the US for both
youth and adults aged 18-44.
⁃ Individuals living with serious mental illness face an
increased risk of having
chronic medical conditions. Adults in the US living with serous

19. mental illness die
on average 25 years earlier than others, largely due to treatable
medical
conditions.
⁃ Over one-third (37%) of students with a mental health
condition age 14-21 and
older who are served by special education drop out- the highest
dropout rate of
any disability group.
⁃ Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the US, and the
2nd leading cause of
death for people aged 10-34
⁃ More than 90% of people who die by suicide show symptoms
of a mental health
condition
Coping with stigma
⁃ Get treatment
⁃ Don’t let stigma create self doubt and shame
⁃ Don’t isolate
⁃ Don’t identify as your illness
⁃ Join a support group

20. ⁃ Get help at school
⁃ Speak out against stigma