The Double Disadvantage: A Theory of Status-Stigma Intensification and Moral Expectations

• In Event: 3481 - Section on Social Psychology Refereed Roundtables (cosponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 03. Status and Bias in the Workplace

Abstract

This paper seeks to examine the process through which the combined effects of status characteristics and social stigmas produce intensified disadvantage. Work in the status characteristic's theoretical tradition (SCT) has produced leading explanations of how status characteristics like race and gender invoke differential expectations that lead to unequal outcomes in the workplace, schools, and other settings. Likewise, various studies illustrate how stigmas such as criminal history and mental illness diminish outcomes in employment, housing, and treatment. Although the processes that lead to disadvantage related to each characteristic have been well researched, there has been no systematic, integrative investigation of how status and stigma might interact to intensify disadvantage - as has been shown to occur in a series of fragmented, case-based studies. Given the moral nature of stigma, this study proposes moral expectations as a new theoretical mechanism driving the intensification effect. In what follows, I review the status and stigma literatures and outline two experiments designed to test the interaction between status and stigma, and the mediating effect of moral expectations using participant evaluations of workplace outcomes across two status-stigma pairings: gender/mental illness and race/criminal history. Reported here are the results of the gender/mental illness case, which provide support for an interaction between the devalued status state of gender (being female) and the stigma of mental illness, suggesting that bias is intensified for women with mental illnesses, but not for men. The results also support the role of moral expectations as a significant mechanism that mediates the status-stigma interaction and its effect on workplace outcomes. Findings have important implications for the status and stigma literatures and for individuals who are “doubly disadvantaged.”

Author

• Jessica Ann Pfaffendorf, University of Arizona