The Protective Style Questionnaire: Self-protective mechanisms among stigmatized adolescents

Crocker and Major (1989) hypothesized three mechanisms by which members of stig-matized groups may protect self-esteem. The mechanisms are: a) ingroup social com-parisons, b) valuing/devaluing performance selectively, and c) racial prejudice. We provide a test of Crocker and Major’s hypothesized mechanisms with the develop-ment of the Protective Style Questionnaire which was administered to a sample of 78 African-American adolescents. Evidence of high internal consistency reliability (about .86) and factor loadings support the orthogonality of the 3 mechanisms. Results showed varying levels of endorsement of each mechanism.