The Works on Psychological Effects of Social Stigmatization, Essay Example

The works on psychological effects of social stigmatization by Laurie T. O’Brien (usually together with Brenda Major) belong to the most fundamental researches of stigma as a phenomenon and are echoed in a number of following studies. O’Brien has described the ways in which stigma can influence a person (discrimination, expectancy confirmation, automatic stereotype activation, and personal or social threats). His is the identity threat model of stigma. This theory views identity threat as the result of stigma-relevant stressors appraisal as exceeding individual’s coping resources. The reaction to identity threat is a stress response or coping effort which in the long run can lead to low self-esteem, deteriorating health, academic achievements etc. O’Brien also states that identity threat does not only change a person’s behavior but also has a negative influence on one’s emotions and beliefs.

In the article Twelve-Step Feminism Makes Sex Workers Sick Kari Lerum explains the essence of stigma for contemporary sex workers. The author claims that in the United States of today sex workers are increasingly often viewed as “sick”. In the framework of modern culture sex workers are dehumanized and viewed condescendingly. The concern of public medicine about sex work leads to medical approach becoming an integral part of every attempt to extricate a sex worker out of a bad situation. It means that in order to receive help the sex worker has to acknowledge his / her position of a victim. Kari Lerum also says that the notion of a woman as a victim is supported by feminists and projected further on sex workers and deepen their status of a victim. The stress response of sex workers is often that of withdrawal and reluctance to accept the help offered. Kari Lerum mentions that the stigmatized population – sex workers – is unlikely to describe the nature of their activity in completely negative terms and hardly talk about sexual harassment or abuse. This is a coping effort for them: if they viewed their own positions as completely negatively, their self-esteem would suffer even worse.

In their work The Problem of Identity Construction among the Homeless David A. Snow and Leon Anderson discuss the reaction of homeless people to being permanently and highly stigmatized. In this work they do not make an excessive use of O’Briens theory, but they surely employ his conception of stigma-related situation as influencing human identity.

Strictly speaking, the homeless do not belong to the active social structure and are thus mainly stigmatized as superfluous population. The authors describe the reaction to stigma-relevant stressor, i.e. a stress response as taking three main forms: distancing, embracement, and fictive storytelling. They also highlight the importance of conversation as a type of identity work.

In conclusion, it should be said that O’Brien focuses on the psychological effects of stigma and describes the fundamental connection between stigma and personal self-esteem and behavior and, therefore, his ideas cannot but be used in later research unless it concentrates mainly on the components of and reasons for the stigma-related situation.

Works Cited

Lerum, Kari. Twelve-Step Feminism Makes Sex Workers Sick. Sexuality and Culture, vol. 2.1998. 

Snow, David A., Anderson, Leon. The Problem of Identity Construction among the Homeless. Symbolic Interaction. New York: General Hall, 1994.