Thinking about stigma (and thinking and thinking . . .)

Stigma stings. Ask anyone who has been harassed or insulted or shunned because they’re gay or black or lesbian or fat or Asian or  .  .  .  the list goes on. In fact, “sting” may be too benign a word. Discrimination can cause serious psychological distress and even full-blown pathology.

But how? What is the psychological mechanism by which the experience of stigma “gets under the skin” to cause illness? A couple new studies offer some insight into this complex and important question. Yale University psychologists Mark Hatzenbuehler, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema and John Dovidio suspected that emotional regulation might play a key role in the way people cope with daily acts of discrimination—or fail to.

They explored this question with an “experience sampling” study. They recruited volunteers who were either African American or lesbian, gay or bisexual, and had them keep detailed diaries for 10 days. During that time, they recorded every incident in which they perceived discrimination—from name calling to more subtle forms of disrespect and discourtesy. They also noted their reactions to these acts of discrimination: The researchers were especially interested in two common cognitive styles—rumination and suppression. Rumination is excessive over-thinking of the hurtful experience, as in: “What did I do to deserve this?” Suppression is the tendency to quash one’s true emotions, to keep a lid on unpleasant thoughts. Although we all do a little bit of both these, in the extreme they can be dysfunctional. The volunteers also recorded how and how much help they sought from others following acts of discrimination.

When they collected and analyzed all the diary entries, they found some interesting patterns. As reported on-line this week in the journal Psychological Science, people used both cognitive strategies—they ruminated more and suppressed more thoughts—on days when they experienced stigma, compared to days that were incident-free. But only rumination appeared to link the experience with later psychological distress. In other words, the stress of a hateful experience caused them to obsess about the hateful experience, which in turn led to symptoms of emotional suffering.

They also found an interesting difference between African Americans on the one hand, and lesbians, gays and bisexuals on the other. Following a discriminatory experience, African Americans sought out and received more social support, while those stigmatized for their sexual orientation tended to isolate themselves from their sources of emotional support. This isolation contributed directly to later psychological distress. The psychologists believe this difference is related to the visibility of the stigma. That is, lesbians, gays and bisexuals may want to (and can) conceal their stigma, and as a result have fewer opportunities to seek support from similar others. Those, like African Americans, with conspicuous stigmas may have readier support networks to help them cope with the stress of hate.