It’s not your fault: The social costs of claiming discrimination on behalf of someone else
Two experiments examined responses to bystanders who claimed that another person experienced discrimination. Participants read about a woman or man who experienced sexism and whose co-worker (male or female) either expressed sympathy or claimed that the target experienced sexism. Participants then evaluated the co-worker (bystander). Overall, participants evaluated bystanders who claimed that someone else experienced discrimination more negatively than they evaluated bystanders who did not claim discrimination. Furthermore, female bystanders who claimed discrimination on behalf of someone else were derogated more than male bystanders who did the same. Additional analyses indicated that female bystanders who claimed that another person experienced discrimination were derogated more than male bystanders who did so because the former threatened participants’ beliefs about the fairness of status differences to a greater extent than the later.