Stop complaining! The social costs of making attributions to discrimination

Recent research indicates that stigmatized people may avoid claims of discrimination because such attributions are costly in terms of perceived control over outcomes and social self-esteem. The authors hypothesized that minimization of discrimination also occurs in part because negative social costs accompany attri-butions to discrimination. In Experiment 1, an African Ameri-can who attributed a failing test grade to discrimination was perceived as a complainer and was less favorably evaluated in general than was an African American who attributed his fail-ure to the quality of his test answers. This overall devaluation occurred regardless of the objective likelihood that discrimina-tion occurred. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and revealed that this devaluation generally occurred only when the target made discrimination attributions, not when he made other external attributions. The social costs of making attribu