UCSB expert on stigma and self-esteem receives Scientific Impact Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology:

For decades, common wisdom in psychology held that people who are stigmatized in some way -- whether due to physical or learning disabilities, mental illness, racial differences or something else entirely -- experience low self-esteem.

Theory after theory offered some variation of the idea that how we perceive ourselves is determined by how others see us, or how we feel we measure up in comparison to them. Then, in 1989, UC Santa Barbara psychology professor Brenda Major decided to examine the data used to support those predictions about self-esteem and stigma. What she found turned existing notions on their heads and altered the trajectory of studies in her area of social psychology.

Major conducted her research with Jennifer Crocker, a colleague at Ohio State University, and they co-authored a paper that appeared in the journal Psychological Review.

Two and a half decades later, that paper, "Social stigma and self-esteem: The self-protective properties of stigma," has earned Major and Crocker the Scientific Impact Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. The award honors the authors of a specific article or chapter offering a theoretical, empirical and/or methodological contribution that has proved highly influential over the past 25 years. READ MORE (UCSB's The Current)