Group Identification Moderates Emotional Responses to Perceived Prejudice

TLDR

The studies tested whether group identification moderates the effect of perceived discrimination on self‑evaluative emotions such as depression and self‑esteem. They found that low gender identification buffered women from depressive effects of sexist evaluations, whereas high identification did not; for Latino‑Americans, ethnic identification predicted higher depression when reading about ingroup prejudice but lower depression when reading about outgroup prejudice, indicating that highly group‑identified individuals view ingroup prejudice as a self‑threat and that attributing negative feedback to discrimination protects only those with weaker group identification.

Abstract

Two studies tested the prediction that group identification (importance of the group in the self-concept) moderates the impact of perceived discrimination on self-evaluative emotions (depression and self-esteem). In Study 1, women low in gender identification experienced less depressed emotion and higher self-esteem if a negative evaluation was due to sexism than when it was not. The self-evaluative emotions of women high in gender identification were not buffered by attributions to sexism. In Study 2, ethnic identification and depressed emotions were positively related when Latino-Americans read about pervasive prejudice against the ingroup but were negatively related when they read about prejudice against an outgroup. Both studies demonstrated that for highly group identified individuals, prejudice against the ingroup is a threat against the self. Thus, the self-protective strategy of attributing negative feedback to discrimination may be primarily effective for individuals who do not consider the group a central aspect of self.