Attributional ambiguity is a
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries betw ...
attribution concept describing the difficulty that members of
stigmatized or negatively
stereotype
In social psychology, a stereotype is a generalized belief about a particular category of people. It is an expectation that people might have about every person of a particular group. The type of expectation can vary; it can be, for exampl ...
d
groups may have in interpreting
feedback
Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to ''feed back'' into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled ...
. According to this concept, a person who perceives themselves as stigmatized can attribute negative feedback to prejudice. This can lead stigmatized group members to feel uncertainty about whether negative outcomes are due to discrimination against them or their own behavior. In comparison, they might discredit positive feedback as a form of sympathy rather than seeing it as the result of their ability and achievement. The term was coined by Melvin Snyder, Robert E. Kleck, Angelo Strenta, and Steven J. Mentzer in 1979 before being popularized by
Jennifer Crocker,
Brenda Major and their colleagues in the 1990s.
Implications
Attributional ambiguity can have unfortunate repercussions for members of stigmatized groups.
Members of groups that are ‘stereotype-vulnerable’ or are often stereotyped are at greater risk of having less self-worth through the lens of attributional ambiguity. With this concept, when people of an often stigmatized group receive feedback, they are unsure what the basis is for that feedback and believe it could have been attributed to things other than performance alone. Whether it is positive or negative feedback they face uncertainty about how accurate that feedback was and thus feeling uncertain about how to interpret the responses.
In the absence of true feedback one cannot totally rely on that evaluation and thus cannot adjust their behavior or performance accordingly. Attributional ambiguity can be applied in a very broad sense, considering how often people seek feedback. In academics, athletics, relationships, etc. are all areas in which feedback can be pivotal. For example, if it is known that a manager is very sensitive to his/her subordinates’ feelings, and he/she gives positive feedback, it is unclear if that feedback was true or simply an action of sensitivity.
Empirical support
In an experiment conducted by Jennifer Crocker, Brenda Major and colleagues, women who were evaluated unfavorably by a blatantly prejudiced evaluator experienced less negative affect than women who were rated unfavorably by an unbiased evaluator. With
African American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...
participants, it was found that when reviewed negatively African Americans were more likely to attribute the evaluator's negativity to prejudice than were white participants. Furthermore, African Americans were likely to attribute both negative and positive reviews to prejudice if they could be seen by the evaluator. Being visible (and thus vulnerable to being stereotyped based on race) helped African Americans cope with negative reviews, but also made them more likely to discredit positive reviews.
The same concept can be applied not only to race, ethnicity, gender, etc., but appearance as well. The extent to which one views his/herself as attractive can affect how they perceive feedback. A study by Major, Carrington & Carnevale (1984) found that, as described above, the attractive participants were less likely to believe positive feedback given to them, believing that the observer had an