“Discredited” Versus “Discreditable”: Understanding How Shared and Unique Stigma Mechanisms Affect Psychological and Physical Health Disparities

Abstract

In his classic treatise, Goffman (1963) delineates between people who are discredited—whose stigma is clearly known or visible—and people who are discreditable—whose stigma is unknown and can be concealable. To what extent has research in the past 50 years advanced Goffman's original ideas regarding the impact of concealability on stigma management strategies and outcomes? In the current article, we outline a framework that articulates how stigma can “get under the skin” in order to lead to psychological and physical health disparities. Further, we consider when and to what degree concealability moderates these effects, creating divergent outcomes for the discredited and discreditable.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Lisa Rosenthal for comments on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

¹For purposes of this article, we categorize types of stigmatized identities into discredited or discreditable categories based on whether the attributes are typically visually conspicuous. It is important to note, however, that some identities may be either discredited and visible or discreditable and concealable depending upon specific time or social context. For example, though we conceptualize HIV as a discreditable or concealable stigma, physical symptoms of disease progression may sometimes render the identity as visible (e.g., Stutterheim et al., 2011).

Note. VS = visible stigma; CS = concealable stigma.

Note. VS = visible stigma; CS = concealable stigma.