Seeing you seeing me: Stereotypes and the stigma magnification effect

Area of Science:

• Organizational Behavior
• Social Psychology
• Service Management

Background:

• Limited understanding of interactions between stigmatized individuals and those who stigmatize them within organizational contexts.
• Need to integrate perspectives of both stigmatized workers and stigmatizing customers in frontline service encounters.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the role of customer stereotypes and worker metastereotypes in frontline exchanges involving stigmatized organizations.
• To model the interaction between customer perceptions and stigmatized worker self-perceptions.
• To investigate the impact of stigma on frontline workers' financial outcomes.

Main Methods:

• Data collected from frontline workers (vendors) of homeless-advocate newspapers, their customers, and trained observers.
• Utilized multilevel path analysis to test hypotheses.
• Focused on vendor prototypicality, customer stereotypes, and vendor metastereotypes.

Main Results:

• Frontline workers' prototypicality for a stigmatized organization increases the salience of stigma in interactions.
• Customer stereotypes and worker metastereotypes interact significantly, termed the 'stigma magnification effect'.
• The stigma magnification effect influences frontline workers' discretionary financial gains.

Conclusions:

• The study provides a dual-perspective model of stigma in frontline service interactions.
• Highlights the amplifying effect of interacting stereotypes and metastereotypes.
• Offers practical implications for managing stigma and its economic consequences for vulnerable workers.