Hypocognition and the Invisibility of Social Privilege

Are members of socially dominant groups aware of the privileges they enjoy? We address this question by applying the notion ofhypocognition to social privilege. Hypocognition is defined as lacking a rich cognitive or linguistic representation (i.e., a schema) of a concept in question. By social privilege, we refer to advantages that members of dominant social groups enjoy because oftheir group membership. We argue that such group members are hypocognitive of the privilege they enjoy. They have little cognitive rep- resentation ofit. As a consequence, their social advantage is invisible to them.