Responding to Sexual Discrimination: The Effects of Societal versus Self-Blame

Although self-blame has been considered to be a useful coping tool for victims, its benefits within the context of group discrimination are equivocal. The present research hypothesized that women encouraged to engage in self-blame for sex discrimination would be more likely to endorse accepting the situation or to endorse the use of individual, normative actions. In contrast, women encouraged to engage in societal blame for sex discrimination would be more likely to participate in nonnormative actions aimed at enhancing the status of women as a group. Female students in Canada were subjected to a situation of discrimination and were encouraged to blame either themselves or society. They were then given the opportunity to respond to the discrimination by endorsing various actions. A profile analysis of the endorsed actions indicated that the women encouraged to blame themselves were most likely to endorse accepting the situation, whereas the women encouraged to blame society endorsed nonnormative individual confrontation.