Understanding Social Identity Threat and Stigma

• Stigma is a social devaluation of an individual or group of individuals based on an attribute or social identity with which they are perceived to be associated.
• Stigma can lead to involuntary psychological and physiological processes that when experienced repeatedly can have detrimental consequences for health.
• People use different coping mechanisms to deal with stigma, some of which have negative implications for health.
• There is a link between stigma and health disparities, and interventions that address stigma can have a positive impact on health.
• Stigma can harm the health of individuals who are stigmatized relative to others.
• Subtle and explicit discrimination by health care workers can, in a very direct way, negatively affect the health care that stigmatized individuals receive.
• Social identity threat refers to the situationally triggered concern that one is at risk of being devalued, discriminated against, or negatively stereotyped because of some self-relevant characteristic.
• Social identity threat can be elicited by the mere awareness of cultural biases that devalue people like oneself combined with environmental cues that bring these biases to mind.
• The immediate presence of someone who is biased or discriminating is not necessary to evoke its negative effects.
• Thus, the important point about social identity threat is that it can negatively affect individuals in the absence of any other individual and in the absence of enacted stigma—any actual (objective) implied bias or discrimination on the part of an­other.
• Social identity threat differs from internalized stigma (also called self-stigma; Earnshaw & Chaudoir, 2009), which refers to the internalization or endorsement of social stereotypes and negative attitudes as applied to the self.
• Individuals need not endorse negative stereotypes associated with their stigmatized status or internalize social devaluation to experience the insidious effects of social identity threat.
• Social identity threat can be caused by situations that remind someone of negative stereotypes about their social identity.
• Some people are more sensitive to social identity threat and may experience more negative effects from it.
• Social identity threat can have negative consequences for health, including increased stress, anxiety, and depression.
• There are ways to reduce or mitigate the negative effects of social identity threat.
• Social identity threat is a situation in which someone fears being judged on the basis of negative stereotypes associated with their social identity and/or fears being devalued and/or discriminated against based on a personal attribute.
• The threat of social identity threat is situational and arises from the individual’s awareness of the cultural representations that associate stigmatized identities with negative attitudes or stereotypes within a society.
• Self-categorization and other-categorization do not always coincide, and sometimes people actually over-identify with a social identity.
• Coping responses can mitigate the negative effects of social identity threat, but in some cases, coping responses that allow individuals to avoid or alleviate social identity threat can have negative health outcomes.
• Social identity threat is situationally cued in social contexts in which one fears being judged on the basis of negative stereotypes associated with their social identity and/or fears being devalued and/or discriminated against based on a personal attribute.

This quiz explores the impact of stigma on individuals' health, the concept of social identity threat, coping mechanisms, and ways to mitigate its negative effects. It delves into the link between stigma and health disparities, as well as the implications for healthcare. The quiz also addresses the role of cultural biases and stereotypes in inducing social identity threat.