This article's lead section may not adequately summarize its contents. To comply with Wikipedia's lead section guidelines, please consider modifying the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points in such a way that it can stand on its own as a concise version of the article. (April 2018)

Part of a series on
Discrimination
Forms Institutional Structural
Attributes Age Disability Genetics Hair color Hair texture Height Looks Size Language Race / Ethnicity Nordicism Skin color Rank Caste Class Religion Sex Sexual orientation
Social Aphobia Adultism Anti-albinism Anti-autism Anti-drug addicts Anti-homelessness Anti-intellectualism Anti-intersex Anti-left handedness Anti-Masonry Aporophobia Audism Biphobia Cronyism Elitism Ephebiphobia Fatphobia Gayphobia Gerontophobia Heterosexism HIV/AIDS stigma Homophobia Leprosy stigma Lesbophobia Misandry Misogyny Nepotism Pedophobia Perpetual foreigner Pregnancy Sectarianism Supremacism Black White Transphobia Non-binary Transmisogyny Trans men Vegaphobia Xenophobia
Religious Ahmadiyya Atheism Baháʼí Faith Buddhism Catholicism Christianity post–Cold War era Druze Falun Gong Hinduism Persecution Untouchability Islam Persecution Jehovah's Witnesses Judaism Persecution LDS or Mormon Neopaganism non-Muslims Eastern Orthodox Oriental Orthodox Copts Protestantism Rastafari Sikhs Shi'ism Sufism Sunnism Zoroastrianism
Ethnic/national African Albanian American Arab Armenian Australian Austrian Azerbaijani Bosnian British Canadian Catalan Chechen Chilean Chinese Croat English Filipino Finnish French Fulani Georgian German Greek Haitian Hazara Hispanic Hungarian Igbo Indian Canadian and US indigenous peoples Indonesian Iranian Irish Israeli Italian Japanese Jewish Khmer Korean Kurdish Malay Mexican Middle Eastern Mongolian Montenegrin Muhajirs Pakistani Palestinian Pashtun Polish Quebec Romani Romanian Russian Scottish Serb Slavic Somali Tatar Thai Tibetan Turkish Ukrainian Uyghur Venezuelan Vietnamese
Manifestations Blood libel Bullying online Compulsory sterilization Corrective rape Counter-jihad Cultural genocide Defamation Democide Disability hate crime Dog-whistle politics Eliminationism Economic Education Employment Ethnic cleansing Ethnic conflict Ethnic hatred Ethnic joke Ethnocide Forced conversion Freak show Gay bashing Gendercide Genital modification and mutilation Genocide examples Glass ceiling Go back to where you came from Hate crime LGBT Hate group Hate speech online Homeless dumping Housing Indian rolling Infantilization Language minoritization Lavender scare Lynching Mortgage Murder music Native American mascots Occupational segregation Opposition to immigration Persecution Pogrom Purge Red Scare Religious persecution Religious terrorism Religious violence Religious war Scapegoating Segregation academy Sex-selective abortion Slavery Slut-shaming Violence against transgender people Victimisation Violence against men Violence against women White flight White genocide conspiracy theory White power music Wife selling Witch-hunt
Policies Age of candidacy Babel Proclamation Blood purity Blood quantum Citizen, speak Turkish! Crime of apartheid Dialect card Disabilities Catholic Jewish Environmental racism Ethnocracy Ethnopluralism Gender pay gap Gerontocracy Gerrymandering Ghetto benches Internment Jewish quota Jim Crow laws Ketuanan Melayu Kinder der Landstrasse Law for Protection of the Nation McCarthyism MSM blood donation restrictions Nonpersons Numerus clausus (as religious or racial quota) Nuremberg Laws One-drop rule Racial quota Racial steering Redlining Same-sex marriage (laws and issues prohibiting) Segregation age racial religious sexual Sodomy law State atheism State religion Symbole Ugly law Vergonha Voter suppression Welsh Not White Australia policy
Countermeasures Affirmative action Anti-discrimination law Cultural assimilation Cultural pluralism Diversity training Empowerment Environmental justice Feminism Fighting Discrimination Hate speech laws by country Human rights Intersex rights LGBT rights Masculism Multiculturalism Nonviolence Racial integration Reappropriation Self-determination Social integration Toleration
Related topics Allophilia Amatonormativity Bias Christian privilege Civil liberties Dehumanization Diversity Ethnic penalty Eugenics Gender roles Heteronormativity Internalized oppression Intersectionality Male privilege Masculism Medical model of disability autism Multiculturalism Net bias Neurodiversity Oikophobia Oppression Police brutality Political correctness Polyculturalism Power distance Prejudice Prisoner abuse Race privilege White Racial bias in criminal news Racism by country Religious intolerance Reverse discrimination Reverse racism Second-generation gender bias Snobbery Social exclusion Social model of disability Social stigma Speciesism Stereotype threat The talk Woke
v t e

Social stigma is the disapproval of, or discrimination against, an individual or group based on perceived characteristics that serve to distinguish them from other members of a society. Social stigmas are commonly related to culture, gender, race, socioeconomic class, age, sexual orientation, body image, physical disability, intelligence or lack thereof, and health. Some stigma may be obvious, while others are known as concealable stigmas that must be revealed through disclosure. Stigma can also be against oneself, stemming from negatively viewed personal attributes in a way that can result in a "spoiled identity" (i.e., self-stigma).^[1][2]

Description

Stigma (plural stigmas or stigmata) is a Greek word that in its origins referred to a type of marking or the tattoo that was cut or burned into the skin of people with criminal records, slaves, or those seen as traitors in order to visibly identify them as supposedly blemished or morally polluted persons. These individuals were to be avoided particularly in public places.^[3]

Social stigmas can occur in many different forms. The most common deal with culture, gender, race, religion, illness and disease. Individuals who are stigmatized usually feel different and devalued by others.

Stigma may also be described as a label that associates a person to a set of unwanted characteristics that form a stereotype. It is also affixed.^[4] Once people identify and label one's differences, others will assume that is just how things are and the person will remain stigmatized until the stigmatizing attribute is undetectable. A considerable amount of generalization is required to create groups, meaning that people will put someone in a general group regardless of how well the person actually fits into that group. However, the attributes that society selects differ according to time and place. What is considered out of place in one society could be the norm in another. When society categorizes individuals into certain groups the labeled person is subjected to status loss and discrimination.^[4] Society will start to form expectations about those groups once the cultural stereotype is secured.

Stigma may affect the behavior of those who are stigmatized. Those who are stereotyped often start to act in ways that their stigmatizers expect of them. It not only changes their behavior, but it also shapes their emotions and beliefs.^[5] Members of stigmatized social groups often face prejudice that causes depression (i.e. deprejudice).^[6] These stigmas put a person's social identity in threatening situations, such as low self-esteem. Because of this, identity theories have become highly researched. Identity threat theories can go hand-in-hand with labeling theory.

Members of stigmatized groups start to become aware that they aren't being treated the same way and know they are likely being discriminated against. Studies have shown that "by 10 years of age, most children are aware of cultural stereotypes of different groups in society, and children who are members of stigmatized groups are aware of cultural types at an even younger age."^[5]

Main theories and contributions

Émile Durkheim

French sociologist Émile Durkheim was the first to explore stigma as a social phenomenon in 1895. He wrote:

Imagine a society of saints, a perfect cloister of exemplary individuals. Crimes or deviance, properly so-called, will there be unknown; but faults, which appear venial to the layman, will there create the same scandal that the ordinary offense does in ordinary consciousnesses. If then, this society has the power to judge and punish, it will define these acts as criminal (or deviant) and will treat them as such.^[7]

Erving Goffman

Erving Goffman described stigma as a phenomenon whereby an individual with an attribute which is deeply discredited by their society is rejected as a result of the attribute. Goffman saw stigma as a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.^[8]

More specifically, he explained that what constituted this attribute would change over time. "It should be seen that a language of relationships, not attributes, is really needed. An attribute that stigmatizes one type of possessor can confirm the usualness of another, and therefore is neither credible nor discreditable as a thing in itself."^[8]

In Goffman's theory of social stigma, a stigma is an attribute, behavior, or reputation which is socially discrediting in a particular way: it causes an individual to be mentally classified by others in an undesirable, rejected stereotype rather than in an accepted, normal one. Goffman defined stigma as a special kind of gap between virtual social identity and actual social identity:

While a stranger is present before us, evidence can arise of his possessing an attribute that makes him different from others in the category of persons available for him to be, and of a less desirable kind—in the extreme, a person who is quite thoroughly bad, or dangerous, or weak. He is thus reduced in our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted discounted one. Such an attribute is a stigma, especially when its discrediting effect is very extensive It constitutes a special discrepancy between virtual and actual social identity. (Goffman 1963:3).

The stigmatized, the normal, and the wise

Goffman divides the individual's relation to a stigma into three categories:

1. the stigmatized being those who bear the stigma;
2. the normals being those who do not bear the stigma; and
3. the wise being those among the normals who are accepted by the stigmatized as understanding and accepting of their condition (borrowing the term from the homosexual community).

The wise normals are not merely those who are in some sense accepting of the stigma; they are, rather, "those whose special situation has made them intimately privy to the secret life of the stigmatized individual and sympathetic with it, and who find themselves accorded a measure of acceptance, a measure of courtesy membership in the clan." That is, they are accepted by the stigmatized as "honorary members" of the stigmatized group. "Wise persons are the marginal men before whom the individual with a fault need feel no shame nor exert self-control, knowing that in spite of his failing he will be seen as an ordinary other," Goffman notes that the wise may in certain social situations also bear the stigma with respect to other normals: that is, they may also be stigmatized for being wise. An example is a parent of a homosexual; another is a white woman who is seen socializing with a black man (assuming social milieus in which homosexuals and dark-skinned people are stigmatized).

A 2012 study^[9] showed empirical support for the existence of the own, the wise, and normals as separate groups; but the wise appeared in two forms: active wise and passive wise. The active wise encouraged challenging stigmatization and educating stigmatizers, but the passive wise did not.

Ethical considerations

Goffman emphasizes that the stigma relationship is one between an individual and a social setting with a given set of expectations; thus, everyone at different times will play both roles of stigmatized and stigmatizer (or, as he puts it, "normal"). Goffman gives the example that "some jobs in America cause holders without the expected college education to conceal this fact; other jobs, however, can lead to the few of their holders who have a higher education to keep this a secret, lest they are marked as failures and outsiders. Similarly, a middle-class boy may feel no compunction in being seen going to the library; a professional criminal, however, writes ." He also gives the example of blacks being stigmatized among whites, and whites being stigmatized among blacks.

Individuals actively cope with stigma in ways that vary across stigmatized groups, across individuals within stigmatized groups, and within individuals across time and situations.^[10]

The stigmatized

The stigmatized are ostracized, devalued, scorned, shunned and ignored. They experience discrimination in the realms of employment and housing.^[11] Perceived prejudice and discrimination is also associated with negative physical and mental health outcomes.^[12] Young people who experience stigma associated with mental health difficulties may face negative reactions from their peer group.^{[13][14][15][16]} Those who perceive themselves to be members of a stigmatized group, whether it is obvious to those around them or not, often experience psychological distress and many view themselves contemptuously.^[17]

Although the experience of being stigmatized may take a toll on self-esteem, academic achievement, and other outcomes, many people with stigmatized attributes have high self-esteem, perform at high levels, are happy and appear to be quite resilient to their negative experiences.^[17]

There are also "positive stigma": it is possible to be too rich, or too smart. This is noted by Goffman (1963:141) in his discussion of leaders, who are subsequently given license to deviate from some behavioral norms because they have contributed far above the expectations of the group. This can result in social stigma.

The stigmatizer

From the perspective of the stigmatizer, stigmatization involves threat, aversion^{[clarification needed]} and sometimes the depersonalization of others into stereotypic caricatures. Stigmatizing others can serve several functions for an individual, including self-esteem enhancement, control enhancement, and anxiety buffering, through downward-comparison—comparing oneself to less fortunate others can increase one's own subjective sense of well-being and therefore boost one's self-esteem.^[17]

21st-century social psychologists consider stigmatizing and stereotyping to be a normal consequence of people's cognitive abilities and limitations, and of the social information and experiences to which they are exposed.^[17]

Current views of stigma, from the perspectives of both the stigmatizer and the stigmatized person, consider the process of stigma to be highly situationally specific, dynamic, complex and nonpathological.^[17]

Gerhard Falk

German-born sociologist and historian Gerhard Falk wrote:^[18]

All societies will always stigmatize some conditions and some behaviors because doing so provides for group solidarity by delineating "outsiders" from "insiders".

Falk^[19] describes stigma based on two categories, existential stigma and achieved stigma. He defines existential stigma as "stigma deriving from a condition which the target of the stigma either did not cause or over which he has little control." He defines Achieved Stigma as "stigma that is earned because of conduct and/or because they contributed heavily to attaining the stigma in question."^[18]

Falk concludes that "we and all societies will always stigmatize some condition and some behavior because doing so provides for group solidarity by delineating 'outsiders' from 'insiders'".^[18] Stigmatization, at its essence, is a challenge to one's humanity- for both the stigmatized person and the stigmatizer. The majority of stigma researchers have found the process of stigmatization has a long history and is cross-culturally ubiquitous.^[17]

Link and Phelan stigmatization model

Bruce Link and Jo Phelan propose that stigma exists when four specific components converge:^[20]

1. Individuals differentiate and label human variations.
2. Prevailing cultural beliefs tie those labeled to adverse attributes.
3. Labeled individuals are placed in distinguished groups that serve to establish a sense of disconnection between "us" and "them".
4. Labeled individuals experience "status loss and discrimination" that leads to unequal circumstances.

In this model stigmatization is also contingent on "access to social, economic, and political power that allows the identification of differences, construction of stereotypes, the separation of labeled persons into distinct groups, and the full execution of disapproval, rejection, exclusion, and discrimination." Subsequently, in this model, the term stigma is applied when labeling, stereotyping, disconnection, status loss, and discrimination all exist within a power situation that facilitates stigma to occur.

Differentiation and labeling

Identifying which human differences are salient, and therefore worthy of labeling, is a social process. There are two primary factors to examine when considering the extent to which this process is a social one. The first issue is that significant oversimplification is needed to create groups. The broad groups of black and white, homosexual and heterosexual, the sane and the mentally ill; and young and old are all examples of this. Secondly, the differences that are socially judged to be relevant differ vastly according to time and place. An example of this is the emphasis that was put on the size of the forehead and faces of individuals in the late 19th century—which was believed to be a measure of a person's criminal nature.^{[citation needed]}

Linking to stereotypes

The second component of this model centers on the linking of labeled differences with stereotypes. Goffman's 1963 work made this aspect of stigma prominent and it has remained so ever since. This process of applying certain stereotypes to differentiated groups of individuals has attracted a large amount of attention and research in recent decades.

Us and them

Thirdly, linking negative attributes to groups facilitates separation into "us" and "them". Seeing the labeled group as fundamentally different causes stereotyping with little hesitation. "Us" and "them" implies that the labeled group is slightly less human in nature and at the extreme not human at all.

Disadvantage

The fourth component of stigmatization in this model includes "status loss and discrimination". Many definitions of stigma do not include this aspect, however, these authors believe that this loss occurs inherently as individuals are "labeled, set apart, and linked to undesirable characteristics." The members of the labeled groups are subsequently disadvantaged in the most common group of life chances including income, education, mental well-being, housing status, health, and medical treatment. Thus, stigmatization by the majorities, the powerful, or the "superior" leads to the Othering of the minorities, the powerless, and the "inferior". Whereby the stigmatized individuals become disadvantaged due to the ideology created by "the self," which is the opposing force to "the Other." As a result, the others become socially excluded and those in power reason the exclusion based on the original characteristics that led to the stigma.^[21]

Necessity of power

The authors also emphasize^[20] the role of power (social, economic, and political power) in stigmatization. While the use of power is clear in some situations, in others it can become masked as the power differences are less stark. An extreme example of a situation in which the power role was explicitly clear was the treatment of Jewish people by the Nazis. On the other hand, an example of a situation in which individuals of a stigmatized group have "stigma-related processes"^{[clarification needed]} occurring would be the inmates of a prison. It is imaginable that each of the steps described above would occur regarding the inmates' thoughts about the guards. However, this situation cannot involve true stigmatization, according to this model, because the prisoners do not have the economic, political, or social power to act on these thoughts with any serious discriminatory consequences.

"Stigma allure" and authenticity

Sociologist Matthew W. Hughey explains that prior research on stigma has emphasized individual and group attempts to reduce stigma by "passing as normal", by shunning the stigmatized, or through selective disclosure of stigmatized attributes. Yet, some actors may embrace particular markings of stigma (e.g.: social markings like dishonor or select physical dysfunctions and abnormalities) as signs of moral commitment and/or cultural and political authenticity. Hence, Hughey argues that some actors do not simply desire to "pass into normal" but may actively pursue a stigmatized identity formation process in order to experience themselves as causal agents in their social environment. Hughey calls this phenomenon "stigma allure".^[22]

The "six dimensions of stigma"

While often incorrectly attributed to Goffman, the "six dimensions of stigma" were not his invention. They were developed to augment Goffman's two levels – the discredited and the discreditable. Goffman considered individuals whose stigmatizing attributes are not immediately evident. In that case, the individual can encounter two distinct social atmospheres. In the first, he is discreditable—his stigma has yet to be revealed but may be revealed either intentionally by him (in which case he will have some control over how) or by some factor, he cannot control. Of course, it also might be successfully concealed; Goffman called this passing. In this situation, the analysis of stigma is concerned only with the behaviors adopted by the stigmatized individual to manage his identity: the concealing and revealing of information. In the second atmosphere, he is discredited—his stigma has been revealed and thus it affects not only his behavior but the behavior of others. Jones et al. (1984) added the "six dimensions" and correlate them to Goffman's two types of stigma, discredited and discreditable. Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=Stigmatize
>Text je dostupný pod licencí Creative Commons Uveďte autora – Zachovejte licenci, případně za dalších podmínek. Podrobnosti naleznete na stránce Podmínky užití.