Invisibility of Social Privilege to Those Who Have It

Abstract

Dominant social groups often lack awareness of their own privilege, failing to perceive the extent of discrimination experienced by subordinate groups. We unravel an underlying cognitive process: advantaged social groups suffer from hypocognition—the absence of being schematic—of everyday hassles experienced by non-privileged groups. Right-handers generated fewer handedness-related hassles than left-handers (Study 1). Men generated fewer gender discrimination instances than women, recalled fewer precautions against assault, and showed poorer recognition of gender discrimination examples from a TEDx talk (Studies 2a-2c). Whites generated fewer racial discrimination instances than Blacks and recalled fewer such instances (Studies 3a-3b). Whites also generated fewer discrimination examples than Asians and reacted more slowly when classifying examples as discriminatory (Study 4). Hypocognition of privilege persisted whether privilege was framed as the absence of disadvantages or presence of advantages (Study 5). Whites showed hypocognition whether discrimination was made salient or not, suggesting hypocognition is unlikely fueled by motivated denial (Study 6). After watching a transgender woman describe her discrimination experience living as a woman, both men and women showed increased privilege awareness and discrimination perception (Study 7). Findings suggest that the invisibility of one’s privilege need not solely reflect identity-defensive motivations, but may also stem from cognitive deficits in conceptual knowledge about privilege and discrimination.