Whiteness and Disability: Double Marginalization

Whiteness involves a set of privileges that are lost or removed when a person becomes, or is perceived to be, disabled. For European American women, disability impacts femininity, the part of identity that differentiates them from European American men who hold maximal power and privilege in U.S. society. Disability represents a health issue, a barrier to social participation, and vulnerability to individual and societal abuse. Development of a healthy disability identity allows European American women to negotiate the multicultural situation of being White, women, and disabled.     

‘In Some Eyes It's Still Oooh,Gloucester, Yeah Fred West’: Spatial Stigma and the Impact of a High‐profile Crime on Community Identity

The question of how crime impacts on others has generated a wealth of research over the past few decades. However, there is surprisingly little knowledge about how ‘high‐profile’ crimes impact on community members who live in a town that has become synonymous with the crime itself. This study involves interviews with community members who lived or worked in the town of Gloucester when the serial killings perpetrated by Fred and Rosemary West were discovered in 1994. An interpretative phenomenological analysis explores the lived experiences and meaning‐making processes engaged in by the participants. Findings highlight their attempts to make sense of a high‐profile case that stigmatised their own community and the practices of identity management that continue to operate some 20 years later. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Veil as Stigma: Exploring the Role of Representations in Muslim Women's Management of Threatened Social Identity

This study extends research on the relations between social representations and social identities through an exploration of how Muslim women manage the stigma of veiling. Based on analysis of individual and group interviews among Muslim women in Denmark and the UK, the study highlights the dialectical nature of social identity as constructed through and against others' representations of social groups and the norms of valuing they impose. It shows how, for the women here, the reinforcement of a shared sense of Muslim identity goes together with re‐evaluation of aspects of that identity, principally in response to representations of the veil that deny Muslim women agency and cast them as oppressed. It shows how norms of gender and agency are in this process variously resisted and affirmed, resulting in the reframing of gendered religious values. Theoretically, the study argues that an account of the role of representations in the construction of identity challenges the inter‐group framework of existing approaches to threatened social identity and sheds light on intersectional dynamics of identity. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How does self stigma differ across people with psychiatric diagnoses and rheumatoid arthritis,and how does it impact on self-esteem and empowerment?

Self stigmatising attitudes have been found in people who have psychiatric diagnoses, however, research assessing self stigma in physical illnesses is rare. It is known that receiving a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can affect a person’s identity and self esteem. This study aimed to compare levels of self stigma, self esteem and empowerment between people diagnosed with psychiatric illnesses and people diagnosed with RA to establish whether self stigma, and specifically endorsement of negative stereotypes, is associated with self esteem and empowerment across these two groups. A total of 202 participants (psychiatric group n = 102; RA group n = 100) were interviewed using the Internalised Stigma of Mental Illness scale (ISMI), or the Internalized Stigma of Mental Illness scale- Rheumatoid Arthritis (ISMI-RA), the Index of Self Esteem (ISE) and the Mental Health Confidence Scale (MHCS). Overall, the psychiatric group had higher self stigma scores (2.5 vs. 2.2, p < .01), lower self esteem (48.7 vs. 36.8, p < .001) and lower empowerment scores (3.8 vs. 4.3, p < .001) than the RA group. However, sizable proportions of both groups had high self stigma scores. ISMI/ISMI-RA was associated with the ISE and the MHCS. The stereotype endorsement subscale of the ISMI/ISMI-RA was not related to self esteem or empowerment in either group. Interventions that aim to decrease self stigma and increase self esteem could focus on alienation.     

Researching stigma as an outsider: considerations for qualitative outsider research

In this article, we discuss a number of important considerations that we have encountered in the process of researching health stigma topics as “outsiders”: researchers (personally) unfamiliar with the experience or topic under study. In particular, we discuss the importance of the following: a reflective stance, challenging negative representations, flexible and sensitive recruitment strategies, validating experiences of stigma, and participant control and power. We see these points as particularly important in the context of researching stigma as outsiders, where our privilege may contribute to unhelpful, narrow, de-politicized or overly simplistic representations of particular “groups” or experiences. We share these considerations in hope of assisting other researchers to reflect on, and articulate, how they negotiate their positionings within their research and the ways in which they shape and construct the research agenda and, by implication, the people or topics under examination.     

Le rôle de la stigmatisation dans la symptomatologie dépressive de femmes françaises en surpoids ou en situation d’obésité

IntroductionDespite the high prevalence of depressive symptoms among women being overweight or having obesity, the role of stigma and causal attributions in the expression of these symptoms in French women has been largely under-explored to date.ObjectiveThe aim of this research is to study the role of internalized stigmatization, stigmatizing experiences and causal attribution in the intensity of depressive symptoms in overweight and obese French women.MethodThese four variables were measured in 160 French women being overweight or having obesity.ResultsOur analyses highlight positive correlations between stigmatizing experiences, internalized stigmatization and depressive symptomatology. It is important to note that stigmatizing experiences seem to play a more preponderant role than internalized stigmatization in the expression of depressive symptoms.ConclusionFor women with significant depressive symptoms, it appears essential to integrate interventions aimed at reducing their level of stigma. Moreover, from a preventive perspective, it also seems essential to promote campaigns in France aimed at reducing the stigmatization in this population.     

Does Suppressing the Thought of a Self-Relevant Stigma Affect Interpersonal Interaction?

ABSTRACT

In the current study, we examined the effects of women's suppressing negative gender stereotypes while interacting with a male confederate. Compared with control participants, those who suppressed negative thoughts about women's ability experienced less self-confidence, lower self-esteem, and were more nonverbally submissive during the interaction, particularly if they were high in stigma consciousness (Pinel, 1999 Pinel, E. C. 1999. Stigma consciousness: The psychological legacy of social stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 76: 114–128. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). These findings illustrate the negative intra- and interpersonal consequences of stigma suppression.     

Biological Explanations and Stigmatizing Attitudes: Using Essentialism and Perceived Dangerousness to Predict Antistigma Intervention Effectiveness

ABSTRACT

The theory of essentialism suggests that biological explanations of stigmatized behavior may not be effective at decreasing stigmatizing attitudes. The effects of biological explanations on stigmatizing attitudes were the topic of two experiments. In the first experiment, participants (N = 243) perceived a biological explanation as a less effective in relation to dangerousness and social distancing attitudes about mental illness than about homosexuality. The second experiment (N = 113) compared the effect of biological and free choice explanations on stigmatizing attitudes about abnormal sexual and eating behaviors. The results indicated that a biological explanation increased belief in essentialism and was most effective for attitudes related to anger and blame. These results suggest that the effectiveness of biological explanations as an antistigma tool varies according to the attitude and stigmatized group.