Stigmatized people have a vast array of responses to stressors resulting from their devalued social status, including emotional, cognitive, biological, and behavioral responses. This article uses existing theory and research on general stress and coping responses to describe responses to stigma-related stressors and to discuss the adaptiveness of these responses.

Recent research indicates that stigmatized people may avoid claims of discrimination because such attributions are costly in terms of perceived control over outcomes and social self-esteem. The authors hypothesized that minimization of discrimination also occurs in part because negative social costs accompany attributions to discrimination. In Experiment 1, an African American who attributed a failing test grade to discrimination was perceived as a complainer and was less favorably evaluated in general than was an African American who attributed his failure to the quality of his test answers. This overall devaluation occurred regardless of the objective likelihood that discrimination occurred. Experiment 2 replicated these findings and revealed that this devaluation generally occurred only when the target made discrimination attributions, not when he made other external attributions. The social costs of making attributions to discrimination may prevent stigmatized people from confronting the discrimination they face in their daily lives.

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Weight stigma is pervasive, and a number of scholars argue that this profound stigma contributes to the negative effects of weight on psychological and physical health. Some lay individuals and health professionals assume that stigmatizing weight can actually motivate healthier behaviors and promote weight loss. However, as we review, weight stigma is consistently associated with poorer mental and physical health outcomes. In this article we propose a social identity threat model elucidating how weight stigma contributes to weight gain and poorer mental and physical health among overweight individuals. We propose that weight-based social identity threat increases physiological stress, undermines self-regulation, compromises psychological health, and increases the motivation to avoid stigmatizing domains (e.g., the gym) and escape the stigma by engaging in unhealthy weight loss behaviors. Given the prevalence of overweight and obesity in the US, weight stigma thus has the potential to undermine the health and wellbeing of millions of Americans.

Stigma associated with HIV infection can unfavorably impact the lives and behavior of people living with HIV/AIDS. The HIV Stigma Scale was designed to measure the perception of stigma by those who are HIV infected. Reanalysis of the psychometric properties of this scale was conducted in a new sample of 157 individuals living with HIV/AIDS in rural New England. This resulted in revision of the scale: shortening it from 40 to 32 items and retaining the original four factors but renaming one: Enacted Stigma (formerly Personalized Stigma), Disclosure Concerns, Negative Self-image, and Concern With Public Attitudes. These four subscales have been refined such that each consists of unique items. Cronbach's alphas for the subscales ranged from .90 to .97, and .95 for the overall scale, indicating internal consistency. Correlations with other scales confirmed the validity of the HIV Stigma Scale in another sample of people living with HIV/AIDS.