Social Judgements Beyond Stigma by Association

Abstract

Stigma by association is a widely studied topic in the field of social psychology. The premise of it is that implied relationships between a “normal” person and a “stigmatized” person cause the “normal” person to receive judgments from observers, possibly caused by the observers making evaluations of the “stigmatized” person and passing them onto the “normal” person as well. This research suggests an alternative mechanism for this occurrence when the “stigmatized” person is not from a stigmatized group. I hypothesize that the mechanism will be based on pro-ingroup biases (rather than biases against the stigmatized other person), or based on perceptions of similarity (this person is friends with people that I would also be friends with). The results of the study were insignificant and the predictors unreliable due to a small sample size, thus no definitive conclusions could be drawn. However, the results may have begun to show that Black participants with high pro-Black implicit biases prefer Black targets with White friends over Black targets with Black friends, creating a status by association effect.