Concept and origin
Crocker and Major (1989) sought to explain the surprising finding that stigmatized people do not, on average, have lower self-esteem, and pointed to their ability to attribute negative outcomes to prejudice. Majority-group members tend to take evaluations as information about themselves, but members of stigmatized groups must constantly ask whether an evaluation is really about them. This uncertainty is attributional ambiguity.
Experimental evidence
In Crocker et al.'s (1991) experiments, Black students who believed an evaluator could see them attributed negative feedback to prejudice and their self-esteem dropped less. Yet when they received positive feedback from an evaluator who could see them, their self-esteem actually fell, because they could not be sure the praise was sincere. Hoyt et al. (2007) showed that ambiguity can protect self-esteem while lowering task motivation, and Mendes et al. (2008) found that ambiguity changes cardiovascular responses to rejection and acceptance.
Costs and limits of attributions to discrimination
Major et al. (2002, 2003) concluded that discrimination attributions protect self-esteem more when the discrimination is clear and targets the group rather than the individual. Kaiser and Miller (2001), however, showed the social cost of being seen as a complainer when naming discrimination. The rejection-identification model countered that perceiving pervasive discrimination harms well-being over time. Attributional ambiguity also helps explain how the meaning of achievement becomes blurred under tokenism or affirmative action.
FAQ
- What is attributional ambiguity in simple terms?
- It is not being able to tell whether you were turned down because of your performance or because of prejudice, or whether praise is sincere.
- Is it always harmful?
- It can protect self-esteem after negative outcomes, but it can also blur the meaning of success and lower motivation.
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-26
References
- Crocker, J., & Major, B. (1989). Social stigma and self-esteem: The self-protective properties of stigma. Psychological Review, 96(4), 608–630. The theoretical paper that launched attributional ambiguity research.
- Crocker, J., Voelkl, K., Testa, M., & Major, B. (1991). Social stigma: The affective consequences of attributional ambiguity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(2), 218–228. Classic experiments on the affective effects of ambiguity.
- Kaiser, C. R., & Miller, C. T. (2001). Stop complaining! The social costs of making attributions to discrimination. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(2), 254–263. Shows social costs of claiming discrimination.
- Major, B., Quinton, W. J., & McCoy, S. K. (2002). Antecedents and consequences of attributions to discrimination: Theoretical and empirical advances. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 34, 251–330. Comprehensive review of attributions to discrimination.
- Major, B., Kaiser, C. R., & McCoy, S. K. (2003). It's not my fault: When and why attributions to prejudice protect self-esteem. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 29(6), 772–781. When prejudice attributions protect self-esteem.
- Hoyt, C. L., Aguilar, L., Kaiser, C. R., Blascovich, J., & Lee, K. (2007). The self-protective and undermining effects of attributional ambiguity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 43(6), 884–893. Ambiguity both protects and undermines.
- Mendes, W. B., Major, B., McCoy, S., & Blascovich, J. (2008). How attributional ambiguity shapes physiological and emotional responses to social rejection and acceptance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94(2), 278–291. Physiological responses shaped by ambiguity.