Crocker, J. & Major, B. Social stigma and self-esteem: the self-protective properties of stigma. Psychological review, 1989, 96, 608-630.

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This paper explores the way in which group stigma can help support self-concept. Member of a stigmatized group will attribute negative feedgack to predjudice, compare their outcomes versus the ingroup, and devalue those dimensions where the ingroup does poorly, and value those in which the ingroup excels.

It's clear that prejudice and discrimination has negative effects for disadvantaged groups.

Racial self-esteem and personal self-esteem are different things. Stigmatized groups are groups in which others hold negative attitudes and prejudices, and who receive disproportionally less interpersonal or economic outcomes relative to the majority group.

The self-concept is is a product of both on'es awareness of how other evaluate the self and the adoptionof those other's views." People in stigmatized groups often have lower self-concepts. People who interact with them may assume lower performance and react to foster that beleif, resulting in a "self-fulfilling prophecy".

However, empirical evidence is contradictory. Self-esteem in blacks has been measured equal to whites. The same trend is true with chicanos and women (and most other differences that provoke discrimination).

Why Can't We Find Self-Esteem Differences?
The idea that self-esteem forms early in life and thus not affected by social stigmas is not convincing.

Self-Protective Properties of Social Stigma

1. Attributing negative feedback to one's group membership
This self-protetive function even works when one cannot attribute the failure to prejudice. Internal attributions for success and external attributions for failure generally result in lower self-esteem. In a given situation, people who believe they were disctiminated against had higher self-esteem than others who didn't.

2. People also make in-group social compaisons for self-esteem.
They do this for proximity, similarity, and self-protective reasons.

Selective Devaluation of Poor Ingroup Abilities
People internalize feedback more from those factors they consider importance. Reducing the importance of a factor will diminish the impact of negative feedback. Girls may devalue math and science even before they take it, because they observer high-achievers are more typically men than women.

The opposite is also true, members in stigmatized groups will overvalue factors in which their group excels.

The effects of stigmitization may depend on when the person received the stigma (at birth or later). Also people with concealable stigmas have less predjudice. Prior prejudice of a stigmatized group make make things more difficult when one becomes a member of that group too. It's also important to distinguish between causing a stigmitization and maintaining it.

Centraility of the stigma to the self-concept also impacts it's performance in impacting self-esteem

Token Situations
With the ingroup comparison removed (only can compare to outgroup) lower performance may result inlowered self-esteem. However, being solo may increase the salience of group membership, having the opposite effect.

Moderators of Selective Valuing
There are some factors difficult to devalue in overal society (intelligence, behavior, and physical appearance).

The negative consequences of these self-protective schema may be in reducing motivation and achievement.