Jennifer Crocker, Ph.D. - US grants

It is well recognized that individuals who belong to stigmatized groups, such as the handicapped, homosexuals, and members of certain racial and ethnic groups, face a considerable degree of prejudice and discrimination, both socially and economically. Psychologists have long believed that this prejudice and discrimination should have quite negative effects on the self-concepts of members of these groups. In particular, it is commonly assumed that members of stigmatized groups have lower self-esteem than members of more advantaged groups. Surprisingly, however, research to date generally does not support this assumption. Blacks and whites, homosexuals and heterosexuals, unattractive and attractive individuals, women and men, generally do not differ in their overall levels of self-esteem. Why not? This is the focus of this research. This research will examine two types of strategies that people who are members of stigmatized groups may use to protect their self-esteem from the negative effects of prejudice and discrimination. First, members of such groups may come to personally devalue those attributes or qualities on which they fare poorly relative to more advantaged groups. Consequently, negative comments regarding those attributes may have a relatively minor impact on their overall feelings of self- worth. Thus, for example, a physically handicapped person might come to feel that physical agility is far less important than intellectual prowess, and hence might be relatively unfazed by negative comments of comparisons about the former skill. Second, members of stigmatized groups may blame negative feedback they receive on prejudice againt their group, rather than on themselves. As a result, they may be personally protected from such feedback. These ideas will be tested in nine studies, using five different types of experimental designs, and two types of stigmatized groups -- women and blacks. Results of this reseach will demonstrate some of the psychological mechanisms responsible for the paradoxically high self-esteem frequently found among people who are members of groups that are discriminated against. More importantly, it should indicate the conditions that are likely to put members of such groups at risk for lowered self-esteem.

This research is focused on the effects of social stigma on self concept. The basic idea is that social stigma create a defensive state of interpretive ambiguity on the part of the stigmatized person, and that this ambiguity reduces the positive impact of success, and often undermines motivation to succeed. Thus, programs designed to provide successful experiences for stigmatized persons might, in fact, have paradoxical effects on their self-concepts. The studies undertaken here will provide important information about the manner in which stigma influences people's lives, and, perhaps more importantly, will suggest ways in which inappropriate (mis)interpretations which stigmatized individuals use to defend themselves psychologically can be overcome. The implications of this research for understanding the effects of stigma are very important. Even more important are the implications of the research for understanding the ways in which the effects of stigma might be overcome.

Self-esteem (SE) is a central aspect of mental health. Yet, research investigating the role of SE in forms of psychological distress such as depression, substance abuse, and eating disorders has failed to demonstrate a causal role of low SE in the development of disorders. The PI proposes that in addition to level of SE, the contingencies on which SE I based are critically important to the functioning of SE, vulnerability of SE in the face of stressful events, and vulnerability to psychological distress. The proposed research will be conducted in three phases: In phase 1, five studies will focus on the development of reliable and valid measures of contingencies of SE among college students, and exploring the role of contingencies of SE as prospective predictors of the activities and psychological distress experienced by college freshmen. In phase 2, studies will explore the implications of contingencies of SE for several controversial issues in the SE literature: two studies using a daily report methodology will explore the hypothesis that instability of SE across time depends jointly on an individual's contingencies of SE and the relevance of daily events to those contingencies. Three experiments will explore the hypotheses that defensiveness among high SE individuals is found among those with highly contingent SE, but not those with noncontingent SE; that whether high SE individuals become defensive in the face of threat depends on the relevance of the threat to their particular contingencies of SE, and that people with different contingencies of SE tend to show different types of defensiveness. A correlational study will test the hypothesis that SF is more strongly related to people's objective characteristics if they have highly contingent SE. In phase 3 of the project, four studies will investigate the role of contingencies of SE as vulnerability factors fol low SE among members of stigmatized groups. One study using a daily report methodology will examine whether minority college students' Se fluctuates in concert with the experience of prejudice, and whether this variability in SE is more characteristic of those with highly contingent SE. A second study will use correlational methods to examine whether the association between perceived racial disadvantage with SE depends on contingencies of worth. A third study will examine daily fluctuation in the self-esteem of women who feel overweight or normal weight, as a function of their contingencies of SE and whether the social contexts they are in objectify them. A fourth study will examine daily fluctuations in the SE of gay and lesbian students as a function of their sexual contingencies of worth and whether they are attempting to conceal their orientation from others.

DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from Investigator's Abstract) This proposal is an application for an Independent Scientist Award for the PI, Jennifer Crocker, Ph.D. to enable her to focus her efforts on research on contingencies of self esteem (SE), and extend that work to test hypotheses about the role of SE in depression, SE and aging, and SE and culture. SE is a central aspect of mental health, and thousands of studies of SE have been published. Yet, several basic disagreements and confusions regarding the nature and functioning of SE remain unresolved. The PI's current R01 grant addresses these basic issues, as well as the role of contingencies of SE in vulnerability to stigma. The K02 award would enable the PI to extend this research to test the following hypothesis: 1) Contingencies of SE, in conjunction with relevant life events, pose a risk for depression mediated through instability of SE, and possibly increases in the stress hormone cortical. 2) Contingencies of SE become more internal, and possibly lower overall, across the lifespan, and this shift in contingencies of SE can account both for continuity of levels of SE across the lifespan, despite many losses associated with aging, and for increases in stability of SE with age. 3) Cultural differences in the direction as well as possibly the content of contingencies of SE can account for the relatively low average levels of SE in Asians and Asian-Americans.

College students experience pressure to obtain academic credentials to gain entry to graduate and professional programs. Ironically, these pressures are most intense among the most talented students, who are likely to attend the most selective and competitive colleges and universities, and have high aspirations. This pressure to succeed creates stress and consequent dysregulation of the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn contributes to both physical and mental illness, such as respiratory illness and depression. The pursuit of academic success can paradoxically interfere with learning, especially in challenging contexts. Many students focus not on acquiring knowledge and learning skills but on obtaining high grades with the minimum work possible. Cheating, which prioritizes grades over learning, is commonplace: In a survey of 1800 college students from state universities, 70% admitted cheating at least once during tests.

According to the self-worth theory of achievement motivation (Covington, 1992), achievement behavior in schools reflects students' attempts to maintain self-esteem by constructing an image of themselves as academically competent. For students whose self-worth is contingent on academic success, investing effort in academics is threatening because failure combined with effort suggests a lack of ability, which diminishes self-worth. Consequently, academically contingent students sacrifice learning and avoid the esteem-threatening implications of failure, by lowering aspirations, creating excuses for failure, avoiding effort, cheating, or psychologically disengaging. The main goal of the project is to investigate whether and when learning orientations (beliefs that intelligence can improve, mastery goals, and double-loop learning goals, i.e., the goal of learning from failure by examining assumptions and strategies) buffer students with contingent self-worth from self-threat in the face of academic difficulty. We hypothesize that learning orientations enhance learning, decreasing stress, vulnerability of self-esteem, and cheating, and improve mental and physical health outcomes, especially for populations at risk (e.g., women in nontraditional fields such as engineering).

A series of laboratory experiments, longitudinal studies, and an intervention study test the hypotheses that 1) students who base their self-worth on academics experience stress in the face of difficult tasks; 2) the belief that intelligence can be improved buffers contingent self-esteem from failure in the absence of practice but not with practice; and 3) double-loop learning goals protect self-esteem, increase learning, and decreases stress and cheating among students with contingent self-worth facing difficulty, better than measured single-loop learning goals or incremental theories. An intervention experiment implements training in double-loop learning goals to see if it decreases negative outcomes (stress, poor performance, physical symptoms, symptoms of depression), in students with contingent self-worth, especially among women in engineering, who are at risk of dropping out of their major, relative to a control group.