Minority Coping Strategies

Coping with Minority-Related Stressors

Individuals differ in how they respond to membership in a devalued minority group. Responses differ depending on how individuals appraise their situationfor example, how much they perceive their identity to be threatened in a given situation. Stress appraisals can lead people to experience involuntary responses such as increased anxiety, increased blood pressure, vigilance for threat-related stimuli, decreased working memory capacity, and impaired performance on intellectually demanding tasks. Stress appraisals also lead to coping. Coping refers to voluntary attempts to regulate emotion, thought, behavior, and the environment. Coping is distinct from its outcomesjust because people engage in efforts to cope with a stressor does not mean their efforts are successful.

People who are targets of negative stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination engage in a wide variety of cognitive and behavioral coping strategies. Classic texts such as Erving Goffman's Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity and Gordon Allport's The Nature of Prejudice discuss some forms of coping used by targets of stigma and prejudice. Although scholars use different labels, several core dimensions of coping have been identified. One key distinction is between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping. Problem-focused (or active) coping efforts are geared toward changing the problematic relationship between the person and the environment that is causing stress. For example, members of devalued minority groups may attempt to eliminate the stress associated with their group membership by changing themselves (e.g., attempting to shed a devalued identity), changing aspects of the situation that is generating stress (e.g., avoiding environments where discrimination is likely), or changing others or the social context (e.g., confronting people who discriminate). Emotion-focused coping efforts are geared toward regulating negative or stressrelated emotions rather than changing the problem that is causing the stress. An example of emotion-focused coping is lessening the sting of rejection by deemphasizing the importance of a domain from which one is excluded. In the next section, research examining minority coping strategies is organized according to the broad distinction between problem-focused and emotion-focused coping. The distinction is often blurred, however, because a single coping strategy may serve multiple functions. In addition, people typically use multiple coping strategies rather than a single strategy.

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