1. Perceiving Pervasive Discrimination over Time: Implications for Coping Mindi Foster, Wilfrid Laurier University Introduction Media references to “The Rodney King Incident” and “The Anita Hill Incident” portray isolated events rather than issues representative of larger problems, namely racism and sexual harassment. In reality however, discrimination is rarely isolated. Instead, as studies supporting the Rejection Identification Model (RIM) show, victims of discrimination report discrimination that is chronic and widespread (e.g., Branscombe, Schmitt & Harvey, 1999). In turn, experiencing pervasive rejection in the form of discrimination has negative psychological consequences (e.g., Foster & Dion, 2003; Schmitt et al., 2002). At the same time however, group consciousness theories (GCT; e.g., Bowles & Duellli Klein, 1983) suggest that defining discrimination as pervasive has positive consequences on a social level, namely taking action to combat discrimination. Such theories are based in the grass-roots experiences of the 1970s whereby women came together to talk about everyday experiences. In hearing about the wide variety of ways in which discrimination affected all women, they began to reinterpret what was previously thought to be an isolated incident into something that was affecting many aspects of their lives. ( e.g., “its happening at home, work, school... everywhere!”). The recognition of the pervasiveness of discrimination was in turn said to be empowering on a psychological level (“It’s not just me”) and on a collective level (“what happens to me happens to them”). Indeed, research has shown that the more women define their discrimination experiences as pervasive, the more they feel connected to other women, which in turn is related to enhanced collective action (Foster, 2000;2001). It may appear then, that there are two competing theories and empirical findings: pervasiveness of discrimination can have negative psychological but positive social consequences. However, if we consider that a political consciousness and activism is the result of a process (e.g., Taylor & McKirnan, 1984), then the two perspectives on perceived pervasiveness may instead be consistent, reflecting two different points in the process. Initially, perceiving discrimination to be pervasive may be overwhelming to the point of impairing well-being. Over time however, believing discrimination to be “everywhere” may become empowering. Thus, this study used a daily diary method to examine the effects of perceived pervasiveness over time. Consistent with RIM, it was expected that those who perceived discrimination to be pervasive at the start of the study would show less active coping than those perceiving it as isolated Consistent with GCT, it was expected that over time, those perceiving discrimination to be pervasive would show increases in active coping. Method and Data Analysis Participants 27 female, 2 male ( Mean age = 19, SD = 1.43) 42.4% White women, 57.6% Visible Minority Procedure Initial interview, including several pre-measures for possible covariates 28-day diary Entries included a written description of discrimination, perceived pervasiveness of each experience, and daily coping strategies Measures Potential covariates: Neuroticism (John & Srivastava, 1999), Group Identity, Past Discrimination (Contrada et al., 2001), perceived severity (“How severe was today’s incident”), number of incidents Time-pervasiveness (“Would today’s experience likely happen again in the future”) Context-pervasiveness (“Would today’s experience likely affect other situations in your life”) BriefCope (Carver, 1997) Analysis Multi-level modeling procedures were used (Singer & Willet, 2003) Lagged analyses were conducted to assess potential causal relationships. Thus, an appraisal of Experience 1 predicted coping with Experience 2 etc. After specifying the unconditional mean, growth and main effects models, the interaction model (time x perceived pervasiveness) was specified: Y ij = γ 00 + γ 10 DAY ij + + γ 20 APPRAISAL + γ 30 DAY x APPRAISAL (ε ij + ζ 0i + ζ 1i DAY ij ) Time x Pervasiveness Interactions Time x Time-pervasiveness on ACTIVE coping Note: controlling for two significant covariates: group identity, number of incidents B = -.056, p =.03 B = -.027, p =.03 Time x Context-pervasiveness on BEHAVIOURAL DISENGAGEMENT Conclusions 1.Consistent with hypotheses, those defining discrimination as pervasive were less active initially maintained their activity level over time reduced their inactivity over time 2.Those defining discrimination as isolated maintained their inactivity level over time became less active over time 3.Perceived pervasiveness appears to have different effects, depending on the point in time Perceived Pervasiveness over Time A non-significant growth model shows no changes in perceived pervasiveness, thus the methodology did not appear to increase sensitivity to discrimination Types of Experiences Negative Comments: “Today my male friend made the comment that “girls aren’t as smart as guys” Exclusion: “I came to the conclusion that the only reason I didn’t have the option to join in was because I was female” Harassment: “Last night while we were coming out at the campus bar, I noticed that the way a lot of our male friends addressed me was by coming up and grabbing my butt” B = -.059, p =.02 Time x Context-pervasiveness on ACTIVE coping Note: controlling for two significant covariates: group identity, number of incidents p =.05 p =.06 p =.03 p =.05 p =.07 This research was supported by a Spencer Foundation grant and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada