Devah Pager's Field Experiment

The social experiment that Devah Pager conducted in Milwaukee revealed the ways in which stigmas and labels can affect certain individuals. Pager’s field experiment was conducted as follows: a group of young college men posing as high school graduates with limited work experience were asked to submit job applications. There were four main groups: white with a criminal background, black with a criminal background, white with no criminal background, black with no criminal background. Men with similar characteristics were matched together as to limit the amount of extraneous variables, or variables that produce an undesirable influence on the variables being observed by the examiner. The goal of the experiment was to observe how race and being …show more content…
Stigma can be defined as a negative social label that not only changes others’ behavior toward a person, but also alters that person’s own self-concept and social identity. The word “convict” definitely has a negative association with it. The fact that the likelihood of being hired reduced about 50% for whites and even more for blacks displays that employers are not willing to take a “chance” on someone with a criminal background. Common thought processes may be, “They did it once, they can do it again” or “Someone who commits crime is not trustworthy and may steal from the company”. While the origins of the stigma against convicts are, to an extent, understandable, these stigmas tend to negatively affect the person who possesses that stigma. For example, Pager explained that while it is true that motivated individuals who are persistent in applying for a job will eventually find employment, people tend to underestimate the toll it takes for them to do so. The constant rejection due to stigma often results in discouragement and even depression, which may lead to disenchantment and giving up on the workforce all together. As a result, this may cause that individual to get into trouble and get arrested. This is an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, or a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true due to positive feedback between belief and …show more content…
The labeling theory can be defined as the belief that individuals subconsciously notice how others see or label them, and their reactions to those labels over time form the basis of their self-identity. A general example is how while all people will eventually break a rule or deviant from the norm, only certain people will be branded with the label of “deviant”. This labeling may occur without even knowing it. For example, when Pager was interviewing employers, they often talked about the negative attitudes they had of black men (eg: lazy and and dangerous). However, when they were asked about their personal experiences relating to these claims, employers had a hard time coming up with concrete examples. Hence, it is possible that those employers may have encountered just as lazy or dangerous white people, but for whatever reason, only the encounters with black people were significant enough to associate them with the negative attributes. Furthermore, Pager noticed “subtyping” during her interviews. One example is how some employers would say, “My black employees are great”, inferring that they possibly believe that the larger population of black people isn’t so great. This may display that these employers are more willing to make an acception to their deviant labels rather than retract them completely. In return, these labels may negatively take a toll on the black population, once again resulting in the