Perceiving Pervasive Discrimination over Time:

1
Perceiving Pervasive Discrimination over
Time Implications for Coping Mindi Foster,
Wilfrid Laurier University

• Method and Data Analysis
• Participants
• 27 female, 2 male (Mean age 19, SD 1.43)
• 42.4 White women , 57.6 Visible Minority
• Procedure
• Initial interview, including several
  pre-measures for possible covariates
• 28-day diary
• Entries included a written description of
  discrimination, perceived pervasiveness of each
  experience, and daily coping strategies
• Measures
• Potential covariates Neuroticism (John
  Srivastava, 1999), Group Identity, Past
  Discrimination (Contrada et al., 2001), perceived
  severity (How severe was todays incident),
  number of incidents
• Time-pervasiveness (Would todays experience
  likely happen again in the future)
• Context-pervasiveness (Would todays experience
  likely affect other situations in your life)
• BriefCope (Carver, 1997)
• Analysis
• Multi-level modeling procedures were used
  (Singer Willet, 2003)
• Lagged analyses were conducted to assess
  potential causal relationships. Thus, an
  appraisal of Experience 1 predicted coping with
  Experience 2 etc.
• After specifying the unconditional mean, growth
  and main effects models, the interaction model
  (time x perceived pervasiveness) was specified

Time x Pervasiveness Interactions

• Introduction
• Media references to The Rodney King Incident
  and The Anita Hill Incident portray isolated
  events rather than issues representative of
  larger problems, namely racism and sexual
  harassment. In reality however, discrimination
  is rarely isolated. Instead, as studies
  supporting the Rejection Identification Model
  (RIM) show, victims of discrimination report
  discrimination that is chronic and widespread
  (e.g., Branscombe, Schmitt Harvey, 1999). In
  turn, experiencing pervasive rejection in the
  form of discrimination has negative psychological
  consequences (e.g., Foster Dion, 2003 Schmitt
  et al., 2002).
• At the same time however, group consciousness
  theories (GCT e.g., Bowles Duellli Klein,
  1983) suggest that defining discrimination as
  pervasive has positive consequences on a social
  level, namely taking action to combat
  discrimination. Such theories are based in the
  grass-roots experiences of the 1970s whereby
  women came together to talk about everyday
  experiences. In hearing about the wide variety
  of ways in which discrimination affected all
  women, they began to reinterpret what was
  previously thought to be an isolated incident
  into something that was affecting many aspects of
  their lives. (e.g., its happening at home, work,
  school . . . everywhere!). The recognition of
  the pervasiveness of discrimination was in turn
  said to be empowering on a psychological level
  (Its not just me) and on a collective level
  (what happens to me happens to them). Indeed,
  research has shown that the more women define
  their discrimination experiences as pervasive,
  the more they feel connected to other women,
  which in turn is related to enhanced collective
  action (Foster, 20002001).
• It may appear then, that there are two competing
  theories and empirical findings pervasiveness of
  discrimination can have negative psychological
  but positive social consequences. However, if
  we consider that a political consciousness and
  activism is the result of a process (e.g., Taylor
  McKirnan, 1984), then the two perspectives on
  perceived pervasiveness may instead be
  consistent, reflecting two different points in
  the process. Initially, perceiving
  discrimination to be pervasive may be
  overwhelming to the point of impairing
  well-being. Over time however, believing
  discrimination to be everywhere may become
  empowering.
• Thus, this study used a daily diary method to
  examine the effects of perceived pervasiveness
  over time.
• Consistent with RIM, it was expected that those
  who perceived discrimination to be pervasive at
  the start of the study would show less active
  coping than those perceiving it as isolated
• Consistent with GCT, it was expected that over
  time, those perceiving discrimination to be
  pervasive would show increases in active coping.

Time x Time-pervasiveness on ACTIVE coping Note
controlling for two significant covariates
group identity, number of incidents
p .06
p .03
B -.056, p .03
Time x Context-pervasiveness on ACTIVE
coping Note controlling for two significant
covariates group identity, number of incidents
B -.059, p .02
p .06
p .05
Time x Context-pervasiveness on BEHAVIOURAL
DISENGAGEMENT
Perceived Pervasiveness over Time
p .05
p .07
B -.027, p .03

• Conclusions
• Consistent with hypotheses, those defining
  discrimination as pervasive
• were less active initially
• maintained their activity level over time
• reduced their inactivity over time
• Those defining discrimination as isolated
• maintained their inactivity level over time
• became less active over time
• Perceived pervasiveness appears to have different
  effects, depending on the point in time

• A non-significant growth
• model shows no changes
• in perceived pervasiveness,
• thus the methodology did not
• appear to increase sensitivity
• to discrimination

This research was supported by a Spencer
Foundation grant and by the Social Sciences and
Humanities Research Council of Canada