Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: People with stigmatized identities are frequently the targets of prejudice. Being the target of prejudice has costly psychological consequences. For people whose stigmas are not visible, concealment offers an opportunity to avoid these consequences. However, concealment has its own negative consequences in multiple domains of psychological wellbeing. It is possible, however, that simply believing that an identity is concealable may be sufficient to minimize the psychological costs of stigmatization. Here, we introduce the construct of subjective identity concealability: the belief that an identity one holds is concealable from others. Across four pre- registered (https://bit.ly/33gaRvy) studies and an internal meta-analysis, we develop and validate a scale to measure individual differences in concealability beliefs and provide evidence that it predicts lower levels of the psychological costs of bearing stigma.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3092771576