PERSONAL EFFECTS - This Is It (1984)

Controllability refers to the fact that the origin or the issue of a stigma is (or not) controllable, that is (1) that the stigmatized person is responsible for the acquisition of the stigma (e.g., being fat, being physically disabled because of a car accident that one was responsible for) and/or (2) that the stigmatized person could do something to get rid of the stigma (e.g., could go on diet if he/she is fat, could find some work if he/she is jobless or poor). Again, note here that this dimension should be understood on a continuum. The categorization is not that easy to make for certain stigmas such as homosexuality or poverty because they largely depend on the beliefs we have about the origins of the stigma. For example, according to the way we think about the origins of poverty (as something entirely due to personal lacks and bad choices or principally due to socio-economical characteristics), we will think that this stigma is more or less controllable. Because the explanations we give for the reasons of being stigmatized are different according to the time and cultures, it may be important not to take for granted that certain stigmas are, or not, controllable. For example, while stereotypes about those who are poor are, in the US, mostly internal (e.g., poor people are poor because they do not work, they are described as lazy), stereotypes held in other countries such as France are internal and external (e.g., poor people are described as less smart but also courageous; Berjot and Drozda-Senkowska, 2007).

PERSONAL EFFECTS - This Is It (1984)

Another personal variable that could also moderate the impact of potentially threatening situations on the way people appraise and react to them is the implicit theories people have on their selves. According to Dweck (1999), aspects of self (personality, intelligence, morality, etc.) can be conceived as fixed, non-malleable trait-like entities (entity theory) or as malleable entities that can be changed and developed (incremental theory). Those theories structure the way people understand and react to human action and outcomes, in particular to negative social feedbacks. For example, Hong et al. (1999) showed that undergraduate university students who believed that intelligence was malleable (incremental theorists) were more likely to take remedial actions when faced with setbacks than students who believed that intelligence was not malleable. This effect was mediated by attributions for failure. Incrementalists attributed more their failure to their lack of efforts than entitatists. In another series of experiments, Nussbaum and Dweck (2008) showed that implicit theories have a direct effect on the strategies people used when faced with identity threats. While entitatists opted for defensive self-esteem repair (here, downward comparison), incrementalists opted for a more self-enhancing strategy (i.e., upward comparison). To test this idea that failure or threat of failure is more threatening for entitatists than for incrementalists, Aronson et al. (2002) trained Black and White student to see intelligence as malleable rather than fixed. Results showed that Black students who saw intelligence as malleable showed greater performance than those who were not trained to see it as malleable. More recently, and on another aspect of self, Rattan and Dweck (2010) showed that the way University undergraduates from minorities (African Americans, Latino Americans) think of their personality predicted their decision (or not) to confront prejudice. Those who believed that personality can be changed (incrementalists) declared confronting prejudice more that those who believed that personality is fixed and cannot be modified (entitatists).

As this is also the case with traditional strategies, one can also think that some coping strategies can be so stable that they can act as personality characteristics and directly act upon appraisals by interacting with situational cues. This is for example the case of self-handicapping that can be a stable characteristic. As such, some studies showed that some people self-handicap more than others (called high self-handicappers; see Rhodewalt, 1990 for a review). That characteristic is so powerful that high self-handicappers tend to self-handicap even in non-threatening situations. This was shown for example by Finez et al. (in press) with athletes who had to perform a motor task designed to detect their physical ability (high ego-threatening condition) or provide pre-testing data for an upcoming study (low ego-threatening condition). Results showed that high self-handicappers who also had low self-esteem engaged in self-handicapping even in a non-threatening situation.

Another surprising aspect of past research is that often, authors tend to focus on one or the other aspect of identity, and more rarely on both (personal or social) or on their links. Research on stigmatization showed however that the frontier between the personal and the social aspects of identity is thinner than we can imagine. This is the case of stigmatization, which is traditionally considered as a threat to the social aspect of identity because one belongs to a group that serves to maintain a positive social identity. But as Schmitt and Branscombe (2002) stated recently about the protective effects of the attribution to discrimination (i.e., attributing a negative treatment to the prejudice of someone else: see Crocker and Major, 1989), the fact that we belong to groups is important for the definition of who we are and as such, is a part of self-definition. Therefore, threats to group membership also threaten the personal aspect of identity (Schmitt and Branscombe, 2002). This is also the case of a lot of other situations that do not represent a threat for only one aspect of identity. This is the case for example of stereotype threat, which is, as stated by the authors (Steele and Aronson, 1995) a threat to the personal and the social aspect of identity. Depending on the way one manipulates stereotype threat, one, the other or both aspects can be threatened (Berjot, 2003; Berjot and Drozda-Senkowska, 2003; Shapiro and Neuberg, 2007; Wout et al., 2008).

The third point concerns the specificities of identity relevant situations. It seems that emotions per se (i.e., basic emotions) are not totally suitable for the study of identity related issues. Indeed, as stated by Tracy and Robins (2004), if identity relevant situations have the potential to elicit basic emotions, they also have the unique potential to elicit self-conscious emotions (e.g., shame, guilt, pride). Self-conscious emotions are emotions of the self. They are elicited when people become aware of the fact that they lived up or failed to lived up self-standards (Tracy and Robins, 2004) when they make inferences about other people's evaluations about them (Tangney, 1992; Leary, 2007). According to Tracy and Robins (2004), self-conscious emotions require self-awareness and self-representations (the I and the Me of James), that are, an activation of a self-evaluative process. In their theoretical model, the authors state that people will first appraise the identity goal-relevance of a situation (i.e., does it matter for how I see myself?) and then compare its congruence with personal goals6 (i.e., Who I am and who I want to be?). Congruence will lead to positive self-conscious emotions (e.g., pride) and incongruence will lead to negative self-conscious emotions (e.g., shame, guilt, embarrassment). Note also the important role of attributions in this model to predict specific emotions. For example the authors propose that attributions to stable and global aspects of the self will elicit shame, and that attributions to unstable and specific aspects of the self will elicit guilt. This is coherent with other points of view such as that of Tangney (1992) who states that guilt appears when the violation of one owns standards comes from oneself (or one's own behavior) and shame appears when the violation comes for one's global character.

A police officer stopped the defendant, Raymond DeHerrera, in a pickup truck matching the description of a truck that had been driven from the scene of an armed robbery of a convenience store minutes earlier. After the defendant was arrested he exercised his right to remain silent and did not give his name. The officer took the defendant to the police station where the police inventoried the defendant's personal effects, including two driver's licenses. Both licenses had photographs of the defendant, but one used the name "Ben Andrew Herrera," and the other used the name "Nomar Arrerehed, Jr."[1] The police also found a check stub with the name "Ray DeHerrera."

We do not believe the defendant's possession of driver's licenses bearing names other than his own is probative of guilt of aggravated robbery. Even if one were to establish some possible relevance, any probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice under the facts of this case. See C.R.E. 403. Aliases tend to indicate to the public mind that the defendant is a member of a "criminal" class, and inherently suspect. United States v. Wilkerson, 456 F.2d at 59; Routa v. People, 192 P.2d at 437-38; State v. Smith, 55 Wash. 2d 482, 348 P.2d 417 (1960). The use of an alias may be relevant if a defendant uses the alias to avoid detection, United States v. Myers, 550 F.2d 1036, 1049 (5th Cir.1977), cert. denied, 439 U.S. 847, 99 S. Ct. 147, 58 L. Ed. 2d 149 (1978), or if it is relevant to an issue of identification. United States v. Wilkerson, 456 F.2d at 59; Routa v. People, 192 P.2d at 438. In this case, however, there is no connection between the names on the licenses and any consciousness by the defendant of guilt. The defendant did not offer the licenses as proof of his identity; a police officer discovered them in a routine inventory of the defendant's personal effects.

The community property assets were then determined and "equitably" divided. Appellant principally received her personal effects, $1,700 car insurance proceeds, four horses (Any Special Times, Miss Dyna Chick, Three Bar Taylor, *302 and High Times Lady), a GMC pickup, and a $3,750 cash award for community labor on the family residence. No account was taken by the trial court of any contribution appellant may have made to the construction of the barn/shop. 041b061a72