Stressful discrimination: two field experiments on social interaction

Abstract Interactional incidents are a common object of survey studies on perceived discrimination and of field experiments on discrimination in social interaction. However, this commonality in object has been obscured by a fundamental difference in operationalization: survey studies measure the discriminatee’s experience, whereas field experiments measure the discriminator’s behaviour. To renew the conceptualization of discrimination as a mechanism of health disparities, the article advances an original analysis of discrimination as a stressor that emphasizes its environmental origin. The heart of the analysis is the concept of stressful discrimination, defined as a group-based difference in treatment that generally causes stress to the target. Stressful discrimination is a mechanism of stress causation that includes but is more encompassing than perceived discrimination (the focus of most research in the area). Relying on a double-randomization design, two interlocking field experiments illustrate this mechanism. Together, the experiments show that women who wear the Islamic headscarf in France are the target of stressful discrimination.