Shannon K. McCoy

Group Identification Moderates Emotional Responses to Perceived Prejudice

Two studies tested the prediction that group identification (importance of the group in the self-concept) moderates the impact of perceived discrimination on self-evaluative emotions (depression and self-esteem). In Study 1, women low in gender identification experienced less depressed emotion and higher self-esteem if a negative evaluation was due to sexism than when it was not. The self-evaluative emotions of women high in gender identification were not buffered by attributions to sexism. In Study 2, ethnic identification and depressed emotions were positively related when Latino-Americans read about pervasive prejudice against the ingroup but were negatively related when they read about prejudice against an outgroup. Both studies demonstrated that for highly group identified individuals, prejudice against the ingroup is a threat against the self. Thus, the self-protective strategy of attributing negative feedback to discrimination may be primarily effective for individuals who do not consider the group a central aspect of self.

Perceiving personal discrimination: The role of group status and legitimizing ideology

It was hypothesized that relative group status and endorsement of ideologies that legitimize group status differences moderate attributions to discrimination in intergroup encounters. According to the status-legitimacy hypothesis, the more members of low-status groups endorse the ideology of individual mobility, the less likely they are to attribute negative outcomes from higher status group members to discrimination. In contrast, the more members of high-status groups endorse individual mobility, the more likely they are to attribute negative outcomes from lower status group members to discrimination. Results from 3 studies using 2 different methodologies provide support for this hypothesis among members of different high-status (European Americans and men) and low-status (African Americans, Latino Americans, and women) groups.

It's Not My Fault: When and Why Attributions to Prejudice Protect Self-Esteem:

This study tested the hypothesis that awareness of the possibility of being a target of discrimination can provide individuals with a means of self-esteem protection when they are faced with negative outcomes. Men and women contemplated being rejected from a course due to sexism, personal deservingness, or an exclusively external cause. Regardless of gender, participants in the sexism condition blamed themselves less, attributed the rejection less to internal causes, and anticipated feeling less depressed than those in the personal deservingness condition. Furthermore, the more participants discounted the rejection—blamed it more on discrimination than themselves—the less depressed emotions they anticipated feeling. Discounting did not buffer participants from feeling hostility or anxiety. These findings advance our understanding of when and why attributions to prejudice protect emotional well-being.

What is eating you? Stress and the drive to eat.

Non-human animal studies demonstrate relationships between stress and selective intake of palatable food. In humans, exposure to laboratory stressors and self-reported stress are associated with greater food intake. Large studies have yet to examine chronic stress exposure and eating behavior. The current study assessed the relationship between stress (perceived and chronic), drive to eat, and reported food frequency intake (nutritious food vs. palatable non-nutritious food) in women ranging from normal weight to obese (N=457). Greater reported stress, both exposure and perception, was associated with indices of greater drive to eat-including feelings of disinhibited eating, binge eating, hunger, and more ineffective attempts to control eating (rigid restraint; rs from .11 to .36, ps<.05). These data suggest that stress exposure may lead to a stronger drive to eat and may be one factor promoting excessive weight gain. Relationships between stress and eating behavior are of importance to public health given the concurrent increase in reported stress and obesity rates.

Death, sex, love, and neuroticism: why is sex such a problem?

Terror management theory posits that sex is a ubiquitous human problem because the creaturely aspects of sex make apparent our animal nature, which reminds us of our vulnerability and mortality. People minimize this threat by investing in the symbolic meaning offered by the cultural worldview. Because people high in neuroticism have difficulty finding or sustaining meaning, sex is a particular problem for them. In Study 1, mortality salience caused high-neuroticism participants to find the physical aspects of sex less appealing. Study 2 revealed that for such individuals thoughts of physical sex increase the accessibility of death-related thoughts. This finding was replicated in Study 3, which also showed that providing meaning by associating sex with love reduces the accessibility of death-related thoughts in response to thoughts of physical sex. These findings provide insight into why people high in neuroticism have conflicting thoughts about sexuality and why sexuality is so often regulated and romanticized.

Expectations about the Future and the Emotional Consequences of Perceiving Prejudice

Three studies tested the hypothesis that possessing a pessimistic outlook on life moderates the effects of perceiving sexism on emotions and self-esteem. Across all studies, a pessimistic outlook on life (either dispositionally held or experimentally induced) served as a source of emotional vulnerability among women (Studies 1-3) and men (Study 1) faced with evidence of sexism directed against their gender group. Study 3 demonstrated that one’s outlook on life influences emotional adjustment to prejudice through the cognitive appraisal process. Relative to optimists, pessimists appraised sexism as more stressful and believed they possessed fewer resources for coping with it. This research emphasizes the importance of examining sources of vulnerability and resilience in understanding emotional responses to prejudice.

Prejudice and self-esteem: A transactional model

This paper reviews three theoretical models of how prejudice affects the self-esteem of its targets. The stimulus-response model assumes that prejudice has a direct, negative effect on self-esteem. The stimulus-perception-response model recognises that perceptions of prejudice may not directly mirror experiences with prejudice, but predicts that the subjective perception of being a target of prejudice has a direct, negative effect on self-esteem. Both of these models are found to be inadequate. We propose a third, transactional model, which assumes that individuals do not respond in uniform way to being the target of prejudice. Rather, this model contends that self-esteem and emotional responses to prejudice are determined by cognitive appraisals of prejudicial events and coping strategies used in response to these events; these processes, in turn, are shaped by personal, situational, and structural factors. Experiments are presented showing that self-esteem in response to perceived prejudice is moderated by presence or absence of threats to personal identity, clarity of prejudices cues in the situation, ingroup identification, dispositional optimism, endorsement of legitimising ideologies, and group status. We argue that a transactional model of responses to prejudice emphasises sources of resistance as well as vulnerability among targets of prejudice.

Associations of Weight Stigma With Cortisol and Oxidative Stress Independent of Adiposity

OBJECTIVE Weight discrimination is associated with increased risk of obesity. The mechanism of this relationship is unknown, but being overweight is a highly stigmatized condition and may be a source of chronic stress that contributes to the development and pathophysiology of obesity. The objective of this study was to test whether weight stigma is associated with physiological risk factors linked to stress and obesity, including hypercortisolism and oxidative stress, independent of adiposity. METHOD We examined the frequency of experiencing situations involving weight stigma and consciousness of weight stigma in relation to hypothalamic--pituitary--adrenal axis activity and oxidative stress (F₂-isoprostanes) in 45 healthy overweight to obese women. RESULTS Independent of abdominal fat, weight stigma was significantly related to measures of cortisol (including salivary measures of cortisol awakening response and serum morning levels) as well as higher levels of oxidative stress. Perceived stress mediated the relationship between weight stigma consciousness and the cortisol awakening response. CONCLUSION These preliminary findings show that weight stigma is associated with greater biochemical stress, independent of level of adiposity. It is possible that weight stigma may contribute to poor health underlying some forms of obesity.

When bad stress goes good: increased threat reactivity predicts improved category learning performance

The way in which we respond to everyday stressors can have a profound impact on cognitive functioning. Maladaptive stress responses in particular are generally associated with impaired cognitive performance. We argue, however, that the cognitive system mediating task performance is also a critical determinant of the stress-cognition relationship. Consistent with this prediction, we observed that stress reactivity consistent with a maladaptive, threat response differentially predicted performance on two categorization tasks. Increased threat reactivity predicted enhanced performance on an information-integration task (i.e., learning is thought to depend upon a procedural-based memory system), and a (nonsignificant) trend for impaired performance on a rule-based task (i.e., learning is thought to depend upon a hypothesis-testing system). These data suggest that it is critical to consider both variability in the stress response and variability in the cognitive system mediating task performance in order to fully understand the stress-cognition relationship.

Will Offshore Energy Face “Fair Winds and Following Seas”?: Understanding the Factors Influencing Offshore Wind Acceptance

Most offshore energy studies have focused on measuring or explaining people’s perceptions of, and reactions to, specific installations. However, there are two different types of acceptance: one surrounds the siting of projects while the other surrounds a more general acceptance of offshore energy. Understanding what drives this second type of acceptance is important as governments have implemented new financial incentives and policies to support renewable energy development; however, citizens and government officials may be increasingly opposed to some of these support mechanisms. Our paper fills a void in the literature by using regression approaches to better understand how people’s evaluations of the benefits and costs of offshore wind impact their level of general acceptance for offshore wind, while controlling for other factors (e.g., demographics). This analysis should help policy makers, and individuals attempting to educate the general public about renewable energy, to better understand the important factors influencing people’s support or opposition to offshore wind energy initiatives.