TY - THES ID - 135032394 TI - Is it me or am I being stigmatized? The effects of attributional ambiguity and feedback mistrust on self-concept certainty AU - Tekin, Eren Aslı AU - van Laar, Colette AU - Meinderts, Christine AU - KU Leuven. Faculteit Psychologie en Pedagogische Wetenschappen. Opleiding Master of Psychology. Theory and Research (Leuven) PY - 2023 PB - Leuven KU Leuven. Faculteit Psychologie en Pedagogische Wetenschappen DB - UniCat UR - https://www.unicat.be/uniCat?func=search&query=sysid:135032394 AB - Summary Feedback plays a major role for its recipients to learn about their abilities and improve themselves accordingly. Yet, learning from feedback can be a more complicated process for members of stigmatized groups due to stigma-related factors interfering with feedback processes, which could leave those individuals uncertain about their abilities. This could in turn put members of stigmatized groups at a disadvantage in those institutions where stigma is prevalent, as research has shown that one’s certainty in their own abilities is crucial for long-term achievements and goal pursuit. Previous research has found that members of stigmatized groups can be more prone to face ambiguity about what led to feedback (e.g., their actual performance and/or stigma), when their stigmatized identity is visible to the evaluator – a term coined as attributional ambiguity. This is as it is always possible for members of stigmatized groups that how others evaluate them is impacted by stigma, prejudice and lower expectations, or indeed by the wish to not appear prejudiced and therefore efforts on the part of the evaluator to not be critical or be extra positive. This means that members of stigmatized groups can be less sure that the feedback is an accurate reflection of their own performance or abilities. However, little is known about the potential consequences of this situation. This thesis focused on how potential stigmatization in a feedback setting could leave members of stigmatized groups uncertain about their abilities as a result of more unreliable and attributionally ambiguous feedback. This question was tested with an experimental set-up where participants’ gender was simulated to either be visible or not in a stigma-related performance setting. In doing so, we aimed to manipulate the possibility that feedback received could be biased. Following negative feedback, we measured to what extent participants found negative feedback unreliable (i.e., feedback mistrust) and were uncertain about what led to this feedback (i.e., attributional ambiguity). Furthermore, we assessed (1) how negatively participants self-evaluated their abilities, and (2) how certain were they in these evaluations (i.e., self-concept certainty), before and after negative feedback. The results showed that the manipulation did not work as intended and it had no effect on feedback ambiguity or self-concept measures. However, there was an overall negative association between attributional ambiguity and self-concept certainty, and an overall positive association between attributional ambiguity/feedback mistrust and how favorably participants evaluated their abilities after negative feedback. This result showed that the more participants were uncertain about what led to negative feedback, the less negative but more uncertain self-evaluations they had about their abilities after negative feedback. Implications of the results and limitations of the study are discussed. ER -