Dr. Ikizer’s empirical paper on stigma and culture published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
Assistant Professor of Psychology, Dr. Elif Ikizer, recently published a paper titled Cultural Tightness-Looseness and Individual Differences in Non-Normativeness Predict Stigmatization of Out-Groups: A Multilevel Cross-Cultural Study in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Across two preregistered studies, Dr. Ikizer examined data from 174,325 participants across 80 countries. She looked at stigma from a multilevel perspective and asked the question of how cultural and individual-level factors relate to stigma.
Specifically, Dr. Ikizer looked at how country-level normative tightness-looseness and individual-level non-normativeness relate to stigma toward racial and ethnic out-groups and groups deviating from social standards. In both studies, she found that individuals in normatively tighter (vs. looser) societies exhibited more stigma. Futhermore, individuals higher in non-normativeness demonstrated a greater level of stigma toward members of immigrant, racial, or ethnic out- groups. In contrast, individuals higher in non-normativeness showed a lower level of stigma toward groups deviating from social standards. This work highlights that country-level factors, individual-level factors, and types of stigmas interact and jointly affect stigma, emphasizing the importance of multilevel approaches for an exhaustive understanding stigma.
The paper can be accessed at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/01461672241273285
