Authors:

Esther Seqal-Weinberger

Date Created:

Not specified

Course Title:

Professor:

Not specified

About Paper:

Individuals' connections to their social identities are important to their senses of well-being. Therefore, denial of these identities can have a negative impact, and strategies to make an identity more central to one's sense of self support feelings of self-esteem, even when those identities are stigmatized and devalued. Disability is one of the most common stigmatized minority identities yet relatively underrepresented in identity research, so the present study examined whether denial of individuals' disability identities impacts and what the corresponding roles are of perceived stigma (predicted mediator) and identity centrality (predicted moderator) in participants with disabilities. Identity denial, in a vignette design, did not significantly predict reported self-esteem, though higher perceived stigma did. Participants with higher disability identity centrality were more likely to perceive an instance of identity denial as unsupportive (and lack of identity denial as supportive), which in turn predicted greater perceived stigma and lower momentary self-esteem. These findings suggest that identity centrality plays a complex role in the self-esteem of people with disabilities, which is not directly explainable by identity denial alone. Centrality has been shown in prior research to have protective effects, and buffer against instances of stigma. However, higher identity centrality also may direct individuals' attention to increased perceptions of discrimination, consistent with our data indicating that disabled participants high in centrality generalized instances of identity denial to increased perception of 'stigma and lower self-esteem. The causal direction of this pattern requires further investigation.

Source:

University of Chicago

Topics:

No topics listed

Co-authors:

Esther Seqal-Weinberger