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  3. Allied against discrimination : testing the effect of stigma type on perceptions of high and low-status allies who confront prejudice
Title

Allied against discrimination : testing the effect of stigma type on perceptions of high and low-status allies who confront prejudice

    Item Description
    Limited Access
    The author(s) chose to restrict access to this thesis to current Whitman students, faculty, and staff. Please log in to view it.
    Linked Agent
    Creator (cre): Glickman, Brian Michael
    Creator (cre): Biehl, Austin G.
    Advisor (adv): Vick, Brooke
    Department (dpt): Whitman College. Psychology Department
    Date
    May 11, 2016
    Graduation Year
    2016
    Abstract

    Two studies examined the different consequences of confronting prejudice for allies of African Americans and allies of overweight people, and also evaluated how perceptions of the ally were influenced by the social identity of both the ally and the participant. Using an online survey platform, we presented participants in study one with a weight discrimination scenario, and participants in study two with a race discrimination scenario. Next, participants in each study evaluated the ally who confronted the discrimination. We hypothesized that allies who confronted weight bias, a more socially acceptable prejudice, would be perceived more negatively than allies who confronted racial bias, a prejudice that is more socially censured. Research demonstrates that when low-status allies confront prejudice they are perceived as hypersensitive, but that targets themselves may prefer lowstatus allies. Consequently, we expected that White or thin participants would prefer White or thin allies, and African American participants would prefer African American allies. We did not expect to see ingroup preference for overweight individuals, as past research indicates that they lack a sense of group identity. Our findings did not support the idea that allies of weight prejudice were perceived more negatively than allies of race prejudice. However, African American and White participants preferred same race allies, whereas overweight participants did not prefer overweight allies, and in fact derogated them more than thin participants. Moreover, we found that both system justifying beliefs and past experiences with discrimination moderated the relationship between ally and participant identity, yet this produced distinctive effects in each study, reflecting differing perceptions regarding the expression of weight and race bias.

    Subject
    Group identity -- Psychological aspects
    Discrimination against overweight persons
    Discrimination -- African-Americans
    Physical-appearance-based bias
    Body weight -- Prejudice
    Social sciences
    Academic theses
    Whitman College 2016 -- Dissertation collection -- Psychology Department
    Genre
    Theses
    Extent
    94 pages
    Permanent URL
    http://works.whitman.edu/201608051274
    Rights
    http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
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