526 Prejudice, Racism, and Discrimination
the male rater or to his prejudice. Crocker et al. interpreted
the lower self-esteem by obese women to the fact that obesity
is widely seen as a controllable stigma, which legitimizes
and justifies prejudice and bias toward the overweight. The
stigma of obesity, however, applies more to White than to
Black American women (Hebl & Heatherton, 1998).
Crocker, Major, and their colleagues have also conducted
experimental tests of the attributional ambiguity perspective
with groups that regard prejudice and discrimination to-
ward them as illegitimate. Crocker, Voelkl, Testa, and Major
(1991) focused on sex and race in separate experiments in
order to explore the potential buffering effects of perceived
prejudice on self-esteem. Their study with White U.S. uni-
versity women as participants succeeded in experimentally
varying their attributions to prejudice on the part of a sexist
man evaluating an essay of theirs negatively; however, the
trait measure of global self-esteem failed to yield reliable dif-
ferences as a function of perceived prejudice, though the
mood measure followed the prediction of a self-protective
function for attributions of prejudice.
Crocker et al. (1991) reported finding evidence for the
buffering effects of perceived prejudice on self-esteem with
Black American participants who had received either positive
or negative interpersonal feedback from a White evaluator.
These participants believed that the White evaluator either
could see them from another room and was thus aware of their
race or could not see them because of a drawn blind and hence
was unaware of their race. Black participants who thought
they could be seen by a White evaluator and had attributed the
evaluator’s feedback to prejudice showed less of a pretest-
posttest difference in self-esteem than when they thought that
the White evaluator could not see them. In other words, in the
condition where prejudice was attributed, Black participants
appeared to discount the negative feedback from a White
evaluator, with the consequence that their self-esteem was left
unchanged. They also discounted positive feedback when the
White evaluator could allegedly see them and showed de-
creased self-esteem in that condition.
The classic bookBlack Like Me,in which White author
James Griffin (1961) described his experiences posing as a
Black man in the U.S. South of the 1950s, had suggested a
similar process among Black Americans. Recalling an in-
stance of racial discrimination he had experience, he noted,
“The Negro’s only salvation...lies in his belief, the old
belief of his fore fathers, that these things are not directed
against him personally, but against his race, his pigmentation.
His mother or aunt or teacher long ago carefully prepared him,
explaining that ‘... they don’t do it to you because you’re
Johnny—they don’t even know you. They do it against your
Negro-ness’” (p. 48). In the United States, Black Americans
are considerably more likely to be targets of prejudice and
discrimination than are members of other minority or subordi-
nate groups. Perhaps as a consequence of this greater victim-
ization now and in the past, Black Americans have developed
through ethnic group socialization the strategy of discounting
negative (and perhaps positive) feedback from White majority
group members and attributing negative feedback to prejudice
as a means of coping and sustaining their self-esteem.
Some investigators (e.g., Branscombe & Ellemers, 1998;
Kobrynowicz & Branscombe, 1997), however, have ques-
tioned whether Crocker et al. (1991) actually succeeded in
demonstrating the buffering effects of attributing prejudice
on self-esteem with their Black participants. Branscombe
and Ellemers (1998) have instead suggested that in-group
identification is a necessary mediator between the attribu-
tion of prejudice for experiences of oppression and self-
esteem for Black American men and women as well as
other minority groups in the United States, such as Native
Americans and Hispanic-Americans. The greater the in-
group identification, the more likely that attributions of
prejudice for experiences of discrimination or oppression
will be associated with the maintenance and retention of
high self-esteem.Protective Benefits for Majority Group MembersOf course, even members of dominant, hegemonic groups
can and sometimes do avail themselves of the self-protective
benefits of perceiving themselves and their group as being
discriminated against, but apparently without the same psy-
chological dilemma and tradeoff confronting members of
oppressed groups. Kobrynowicz and Branscombe (1997) ar-
gued that certain members of structurally privileged groups,
such as White American men whose self-esteem may be low
or otherwise vulnerable, may exaggerate estimates of per-
ceived discrimination against their group as a means of bol-
stering their self-esteem. Consistent with this perspective, a
sample of White men scoring low in self-esteem were espe-
cially prone to perceive themselves and their group as having
been discriminated against on the basis of gender. Likewise,
Branscombe (1998) showed that asking men to contemplate
their group’s disadvantage on the basis of gender led to
higherself-esteem, whereas thinking about their group’s ad-
vantages produced decreases on group-related well-being.
By contrast, women contemplating their group’s disadvan-
tages scored lowerin reported self-esteem. Thus, the self-
protective effect of attributing one’s failure to discrimination
is apparently even more evident among dominant majority
group members and has positive benefits for both their self-
esteem and their sense of control.