Some stigmatized groups, such as gays and lesbians, make progress in pushing back against the stigma when they see themselves as part of a group. Historically, that could mean participating in a social movement, but there can be progress even short of that. Identifying with other people like you, feeling a bond with them, and seeing fellow group members as having a lot in common can perhaps become first steps in getting taken seriously as a group that is fed up and is not going to take it anymore.
For groups such as gays and lesbians, identification with other gays and lesbians has happened in the crucible of blatant discrimination against them, along with other people’s belief that it was acceptable to be prejudiced against them. Challenging discrimination, and the acceptability of discrimination, were goals of the social movement that emerged.
Does any of this apply to single people? Do single people see themselves as part of a group? Do they identify with other single people and see single people as having a lot in common with each other? Do they realize that they are targets of prejudice and discrimination?
What about people who are not single? Do they see single people as a group? Do they think it is acceptable to be prejudiced against single people?
Insights from Recent Research: An Overview
In a pair of studies published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Alexandra N. Fisher and John K. Sakaluk addressed all of those questions. They found that single people do, on the average, see themselves as part of a group. But they do not identify as single as much as they identify with people who share their sexual orientation. They also identify with other single people less than coupled people identify with other coupled people.
People who are not single also see single people as a group. But coupled people are seen as more of a coherent group, as are members of sexual minorities.
Single people do, on the average, realize that they personally experience more discrimination than couples do. They also know that single people as a group are more often targets of discrimination than couples. If the single people also identify as a member of a sexual minority, they see themselves as experiencing more discrimination because of that than because of their marital status.
Other people think it is more acceptable to be prejudiced against single people than heterosexuals, asexuals, or gay, lesbian, or bisexual people. Now here’s the link between the group-y-ness of single people and discrimination: The more people saw single people as part of a group, the less acceptable they thought it was to be prejudiced against them. That raises the possibility – though it surely doesn’t establish it definitively – that there are potential social justice payoffs when single people identify more with other single people and when other people start to realize that single people have some solidarity.
Seeing Single People as a Group, and as a Stigmatized Group: The Details
Here are the details of the two studies.
Do Single People Identify with Other Single People as a Group?
To determine whether single people identified with single people as a group, five kinds of questions were asked:
- Centrality of the group to you: “I often think about the fact that I am single.”
- Solidarity: “I feel a bond with people who are single.”
- Satisfaction: “I’m glad to be single.”
- Having a lot in common, personally: “I have a lot in common with the average single person.”
- Group members have a lot in common: “Single people have a lot in common with each other.”
It doesn’t take much to get people to identify with a group, even the most arbitrary and seemingly meaningless ones. In many studies, including this one, participants are shown dots on screens and asked to estimate the number of dots they see. Then they are told, arbitrarily, that they are either “underestimators” or “overestimators.” Instead of just shrugging, people identify with other underestimators or overestimators. They favor their own group over the other group, as if being an underestimator or overestimator actually makes them superior to the other type.
In the first study, with 297 adults from the U.S. recruited using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, Fisher and Sakaluk first administered the dot estimation task and assessed participants’ identification with their group. They only did that to see if single people would identify more with single people as a group than they identified with, say, their fellow overestimators. They did.
The study also included people in romantic relationships, and they were asked the same kinds of questions about identifying with other people in romantic relationships. The coupled people identified with other coupled people as a group even more than single people identified with other single people as a group.
The participants were also asked about their identification with other people who shared their sexual orientation. Single people identified more with people who shared their sexual orientation than they did with other single people.
In summary, single people did identify with other single people as a group. They identified more with other single people than they did with other overestimators. But they identified less with other single people than with people who shared their sexual orientation. And coupled people identified with other coupled people more than single people identified with other single people.
Do Single People Think They Are Targets of Discrimination?
To see whether single people think that they experience discrimination, they were asked about their personal experiences as well as how single people as a group are treated.
- Personal experiences: “To what extent have you personally experienced discrimination for being single?”
- Group experiences: “To what extent do you think people who are single experience discrimination?”
People in romantic relationships were asked the same kinds of questions about their experiences of discrimination. All participants were asked about their perceptions of discrimination as a member of their sexual orientation group.
Single people believed they experienced more discrimination for being single than coupled people thought that they did for being coupled. Single people also thought that people who are single generally experience more discrimination (as a group) than coupled people thought that they did. That’s not just a perception; it’s reality. Single people are targets of discrimination in just about every major domain of life. In the U.S., that includes discrimination that is written right into federal laws.
Single people who identified as a sexual minority (for example, as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or asexual) said that they experienced more personal discrimination as a member of that group than they did as a single person. They also thought that their sexual minority group, as a group, experienced more discrimination than single people did as a group.
Do Other People See Single People as a Group?
In a second study, Fisher and Sakaluk asked 153 adults in the U.S., again recruited using Mechanical Turk, about perceptions of groups to which they did not belong. Single people shared their perceptions of people in romantic relationships and vice versa. Sexual people shared their perceptions of asexuals and vice versa. Heterosexual people shared their perceptions of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people and vice versa. The meaningless group was included, too, and overestimators judged underestimators and vice versa.
These questions were used to see whether other people see single people as a group:
- “Some groups have the characteristics of a ‘group’ more than others do. To what extent does this group (single people) qualify as a ‘group’?”
- “How important is this group (single people) to its members?”
- “How much do the group members interact with each other?”
The same kinds of questions were asked about the other groups.
The results were very similar to what the researchers found in their first study, when they asked people about their own groups:
- Single people were seen as more of a group than the arbitrary groups of overestimators or underestimators.
- Single people were seen as less group’y than coupled people.
- Single people were seen as forming less of a group than gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.
Do Other People Think It Is Acceptable to Be Prejudiced Against Single People?
To see whether people thought it was acceptable to be prejudiced against single people, the researchers asked the participants in the second study to indicate how ok is it to “express negative feelings toward single people.” Analogous questions were asked about acceptability of being prejudiced against the members of the other groups.
Remember that the people doing the judging of single people were coupled people. Being prejudiced against single people was considered more acceptable than being prejudiced against heterosexuals, asexuals, or gay, lesbian, or bisexual people. In fact, prejudice toward only one group was deemed significantly more acceptable than prejudice toward single people, and that was the arbitrary group (people who overestimate or underestimate the number of dots on a screen).
Does It Matter If Single People Are Seen as a Group?
When people saw single people as more of a group, they were less likely to say that it was acceptable to be prejudiced against them. The group-y-ness of single people wasn’t the most powerful factor in whether people thought it was okay to be biased against single people. The authors said that “prejudice toward singles had more to do with people’s beliefs about individual singles’ ability and desire to unsingle themselves rather than their perceived group-y-ness per se.” (I’m going to start a new hashtag on twitter: #DontUnsingleYourself.)
A Few Words of Caution
If you read the original research report, beware of a few inaccurate statements. In the introduction, the authors claim that people who get married experience greater well-being. But as of 2012, there were already 18 studies showing that people who marry do not become lastingly happier than they were when they were single. Now there are even more, and they also include studies of health.
At the end of their article, the authors talk about the “poor well-being of singles.” I don’t think there has ever been a study showing that, on the average, the well-being of single people is poor. In studies of happiness, for example, single people typically rate themselves as squarely on the happy end of the scale. If they had “poor well-being,” they would rate themselves as decidedly unhappy. (I reviewed some of those studies in Singled Out.)
With regard to health, the same is true. For example, in a study of a national sample of adults in the U.S., lifelong single people had the option to say that their health was poor. Instead, 92.6% said it was good or excellent.
[Notes: (1) The opinions expressed here do not represent the official positions of Unmarried Equality. (2) I’ll post all these blog posts at the UE Facebook page; please join our discussions there. (3) For links to previous columns, click here.]
About Bella DePaulo
