The idea that people are active in responding to discrimination and stigmatization is not new. Based on this logic and drawing on the literature on stigmatization, discrimination and more generally on identity, the aim of the present article is to propose a revised model of stress and coping with stigmatization by focusing on its principal characteristic, its devaluing aspect for identity. As such, many authors proposed to use or adapt models of stress to better understand how stigma affects people. But stigmatization can also have more subtle effects as stigmas can serve teachers to fulfill prophecies (Jussim and Harber, 2005 Jussim et al., 2009) and can also have deleterious effects on performance through stereotype threat effects (Steele and Aronson, 1995 Huguet and Régnier, 2007).Īll those consequences of stigmatization and discrimination have such deleterious effect on the individual (e.g., low self-esteem, anxiety, lower performance), that several authors have recently conceived stigma as a very powerful stressor (Crocker et al., 1998 Clark et al., 1999 Miller and Kaiser, 2001 Major and O'Brien, 2005). This can be blatant aggressions or more subtle mistreatment such as receiving a lower grade than deserve, being ignored by teachers and peers (Fisher et al., 2000). One of the most obvious and frequent consequence of stigmatization is the discrimination that often comes with it. The consequences of stigma are numerous, especially for the stigmatized. All are stigmatizing “categories” that can be met in the school context. This can be because one is a woman, poor or from a poor family, homosexual, from another culture, member of a minority or simply because one does not look like everybody else (e.g., too big, too tall, too small). Now, one can be stigmatized because he merely belongs to a group that is devalued in a given society. Today's conceptualizations have changed quite a lot, going from a single external mark that told people to avoid a person, to, nowadays, the possession (or the belief of it) of “some attribute or characteristic that conveys a social identity 1 that is devalued in a particular social context” (Crocker et al., 1998, p. Originally, a stigma was a physical mark that was apposed on some persons to signal not only their lower status (e.g., prostitute, slave), but the fact that one should avoid them because of morality flaws, sicknesses or more generally because those person could be dangerous in a way or another.
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