The personalgroup discrimination discrepancy : the role of social identity

Recent research has unveiled a robust and pervasive phenomenon: individual members of a group consistently perceive higher levels of discrimination directed at their group as a whole as compared to themselves personally as members of that group. This phenomenon has been labelled the "personal/group discrimination discrepancy". Two studies were conducted using female subjects to investigate possible explanations underlying the personal/group discrimination discrepancy. Study 1 examined the effect of question wording employed in previous research. Study 2 investigated the relationship between an individual's perceptions of personal and group discrimination and her personal and social identity with respect to women as a group. Contrary to the main hypothesis, those subjects who made stronger associations between themselves personally as women and women as a group demonstrated a larger discrepancy between ratings of personal and group discrimination as compared to those subjects who less strongly associated themselves personally with the group. This result is discussed in terms of Turner's (1982) concept of depersonalization