Benefit-Finding Improves Well-Being among Women Who Have Experienced Gender Discrimination

Women experience gender discrimination in numerous important life domains, which can harm psychological well-being. Benefit-finding—identifying the positive implications of having overcome a negative experience—has been theorized as a coping strategy to improve well-being. We experimentally tested whether prompting women, recruited online, to consider the implications of their past experiences of discrimination for themselves in the present—and the benefit-finding that follows—can improve well-being. U.S women (n = 409) were asked to consider a past experience of sexism in three data collections (Studies 1a, 1b, 1c). In each collection, participants were randomly assigned to a benefit-finding condition or a control condition. Those participants in to the benefit-finding condition were asked to write about the implications or lessons of their experience for the present whereas those women randomly assigned to the control condition did not. A meta-analysis based on the three data collections revealed that participants in the benefit-finding condition reported greater well-being than those in the control, which was a moderately strong effect. In a third collection (Study 1c), we included an additional control condition in which participants wrote about known facts of gender discrimination. We also included measures of sexism perceptions and willingness to engage in collective action. Participants who reflected upon the implications of their past experiences of sexism reported the highest intentions to engage in collective action to confront future sexism (relative to both control conditions). For women coping with discrimination, this intervention can help alleviate the harmful consequences of discrimination and motivate support to fight gender inequality

The social complexities of disability: Discrimination, belonging and life satisfaction among Canadian youth

Although disability has been on the psychological agenda for some time, there is limited empirical evidence on the life satisfaction of youth with a disability, especially the effect of discrimination and factors that might mitigate it. We address this critical gap by examining the complex social experiences of youth with a disability and the culminating effect on life satisfaction. We ask three questions: (1) Is having a disability associated with lower life satisfaction? (2) Do youth with a disability experience discrimination and, if so, how does this affect life satisfaction? (3) Can a sense of belonging mitigate the negative effect of discrimination? We address these questions using microdata from the Canadian Community Health Survey, which is nationally representative. Our sample consists of 11,997 adolescents, of whom 2193 have a disability. We find that life satisfaction is lower among youth with a disability. Moreover, many experience disability-related discrimination, which has a negative effect on life satisfaction. However, this is mitigated by a sense of belonging to the community. Specifically, youth with a disability do not report lower life satisfaction when high belonging is present, even if they experience discrimination. This is true for boys and girls. We conclude that belonging, even if it is not disability-related, is protective of well-being. This has important implications for policy whereby organizations that cultivate a sense of belonging may alleviate the harm sustained by youth who experience discrimination as a result of their disability

“Patriotism à la Carte”: Perceived Legitimacy of Collective Guilt and Collective Pride as Motivators for Political Behavior

Intergroup emotions motivate behavior, yet little is known about how people perceive these emotional experiences in others. In three experiments (Ns = 109, 179, 246), we show that U.S. citizens believe collective guilt is an illegitimate emotional motivator for ingroup political behavior, while collective pride is legitimate. This differential legitimacy is due to the perception that collective guilt violates the norm of group interest, while collective pride adheres to it; those who believe ingroup interests are more important than outgroups’ exhibited this illegitimacy gap. The perception that the intergroup emotion promoted ingroup entitativity mediated the relationship between emotion (pride vs. guilt) and legitimacy; this relationship was especially strong for those high in the belief in the norm of group interest. Collective guilt can have prosocial consequences, yet the perception that it is illegitimate may hinder such consequences from being realized

The internal and external causal loci of attributions to prejudice

Portions of this research were presented at the May 2000 meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL, and at the June 2000 meeting of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, Minneapolis, MN. We express our sincere thanks to Howard Baumgartel for the Peace and Justice Research Award that supported the first author, and to Mark Alicke and Paul Silvia for their very helpful suggestions on an earlier draft of the manuscript.In two studies, the authors examined the causal loci of attributions to prejudice. Participants were asked to consider a situation in which they were rejected. Whether the rejection was attributable to an exclusively external cause or attributable to bias against one's gender group was manipulated. In contrast to the existing view that attributions to prejudice are external, results from both studies supported the prediction that attributions to prejudice also have a substantial internal component. In Study 2, the authors examined the affective consequences of attributions for rejection and found that for women, attributions to prejudice were more harmful than an exclusively external attribution. For men, however, attributions to prejudice were less harmful than an exclusively external attribution.. Results are discussed in terms of the ways in which attributions to prejudice differ from purely external attributions

Antecedents and Consequences of Group-Based Guilt: The Effects of Ingroup Identification

Effects of ingroup identification on antecedents and consequences of group-based guilt were examined in two experiments. In the first study, ingroup identification was unrelated to guilt when the negative historical information was said to come from an outgroup source, but was positively related when the same information was said to come from an ingroup source. Among high identifiers it is difficult to dismiss negative information when the source is one's own ingroup. In the second study, people who are low in identification were more in favor of acknowledging the negative aspects of their group's history as a way of alleviating feelings of guilt. We discuss the implications of these results for coming to terms with the legacy of a negative ingroup past

The Difficulty of Making Reparations Affects the Intensity of Collective Guilt

We examined how the difficulty of making reparations for the harm done to another group affects the intensity of collective guilt. Men were confronted with information documenting male privilege and were told that they would have a chance to help women and reduce patriarchy by collecting signatures on a petition. We manipulated the difficulty of making reparations by asking participants to collect 5, 50, or 100 signatures. As predicted by Brehm's (1999) theory of emotional intensity, collective guilt was a non-monotonic function of the difficulty of making reparations. Men in the moderate difficulty (50 signatures) condition expressed greater collective guilt than participants in the low (5) or high (100) difficulty conditions. Results are discussed in terms of the implications for the theory of emotional intensity, collective guilt, and collective emotions more generally

Perceptual harmony in judgments of group prototypicality and intragroup respect

We test common sense psychology of intragroup relations whereby people assume that intragroup respect and ingroup prototypicality are positively related. In Study 1a, participants rated a group member as more prototypical if they learned that group member was highly respected rather than disrespected. In Study 1b, participants rated a group member as more respected by other group members if they learned that group member was prototypical rather than unprototypical. As a commonsense psychology of groups, we reasoned that the perceived relationship between prototypicality and intragroup respect would be stronger for cohesive groups compared to incohesive groups. The effect of intragroup respect on perceptions of prototypicality (Study 2a & 2c) and the effect of prototypicality on perceptions of intragroup respect (Study 2b) were generally stronger for participants considering cohesive groups relative to incohesive groups. However, the interaction effect of prototypicality and group cohesion on intragroup respect did fail to replicate in Study 2d. In Studies 3, 4a, and 4b we manipulated the relationship between prototypicality and intragroup respect and found that when these variables were in perceptual harmony participants perceived groups as more cohesive. The results of eight out of nine studies conducted are consistent with the prediction that people make inferences about intragroup respect, prototypicality, and group cohesion in a manner that maintains perceptual harmony

“For God and Country”: Religion and the Endorsement of National Self-Stereotypes

Portions of this paper were presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Montreal, Canada, November 1998.To assess the relationship between personal religious motivation and spontaneous thoughts about one's nation, Canadian and American undergraduates completed a measure of religious orientation, and both listed and rated the importance of self-generated thoughts about their respective countries. Among Americans, intrinsic orientation predicted greater ascribed importance to the national heritage (e.g., freedom, equal opportunity, tradition, and family) and to official national symbols such as the flag. Among Canadians, intrinsic orientation predicted greater ascribed importance to multiculturalism but was unrelated to the enshrining of national symbols. Thus, in both cases, intrinsic religion was associated with the endorsement of ideological components of the nation's dominant self-stereotype