ATTITUDES AND SOCIAL COGNITION 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. For more than half a century, social psychologists have exam-ined stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination, primarily from the perspective of members of dominant social groups. Recently, attention has turned to how potential targets of prejudice construe and cope with their predicaments (Crocker, Major, & Steele, 1998; Major, 1994; Steele, 1997). The current research extends this latter focus by examining the conditions under which people blame negative outcomes on discrimination. Perceiving that one is a victim of discrimination has important implications for self-esteem and psychological well-being (Crocker, Cornwell, & Major, 1993