Erving Goffman's Theory of Stigma: Definition and Social Response

Introduction

In his book Stigma, sociologist Erving Goffman offers a detailed examination of how people respond to others based on stigma, why people act the way they do toward stigmatized individuals, and how being stigmatized affects those who carry a stigma. Goffman's ideas are partly drawn from the work of George Herbert Mead and Georg Simmel; however, Goffman extends their ideas and offers a more contemporary view of stigma. This paper begins by considering Goffman's definition of stigma, then examines how people respond to stigmas, and finally compares Goffman's ideas to those of Mead and Simmel.

Goffman's Definition of Stigma

Erving Goffman (5) defines a stigma as "an undesired differentness from what we had anticipated." The notion of "differentness" means that something about an individual sets them apart from what is considered ordinary and normal. This relates to the idea that society categorizes people and establishes norms for what is considered acceptable. When meeting another individual, a person will instinctively compare that new person against their understanding of what is normal. If the person conforms to expectations, the observer will not even be aware that this analysis has taken place. However, if something marks the person as different from those considered normal, that attribute immediately becomes salient.

Goffman (5) further explains that the person with a stigma "possessed a trait that can obtrude itself upon attention and turn those of us whom he meets away from him, breaking the claim that his other attributes have on us." This shows that when a person has a stigma, it becomes the defining attribute — overriding all normal characteristics — and leads others to perceive and reject that person as fundamentally "other."

The actual form a stigma takes can vary widely. It may refer to physical disabilities such as blindness, deafness, or other bodily differences. It can also refer to mental disabilities such as schizophrenia, or to social behaviors considered abnormal and unacceptable — individuals such as those with drug addictions fall into this category. Finally, stigma can attach to people who simply do not conform to socially expected behavior; those who are extremely shy or who lack awareness of social conventions can find themselves stigmatized as well.

How People Respond to Stigma

One of the first ways people can react to stigma is by dehumanizing the stigmatized individual. This refers to a process in which the person becomes so thoroughly defined by the stigma that the human being behind it is no longer perceived. For example, a person whose physical condition prevents them from walking may be labeled simply as a "cripple." That label refers only to the individual's physical state and says nothing about who the person is or what value they hold. By reducing people to such labels, others are able to justify rejecting them.

Goffman offers a telling example involving people who are blind. He notes that individuals who are blind are often generalized as disabled rather than recognized as human beings who happen to be blind. He illustrates this by describing how people will shout at a blind person as though they are also deaf, or speak slowly as though the person is incapable of understanding. This demonstrates how stigma prompts people to treat the attribute as the whole person, rather than as one aspect of an otherwise complete individual.

Another way people respond to stigma involves discriminating against the stigmatized person on the basis of assumed characteristics that extend well beyond the observed stigma itself. Consider the example of drug addiction as a stigma: an observer may not only distance themselves socially but may also assume that the person belongs to a lower social class, is morally weak, is a criminal, or is mentally ill. These secondary assumptions allow the observer to explain the stigmatized person's behavior, separate themselves from that person, and justify judging and rejecting them.

This process can be taken further still. An observer may convince themselves that a drug addict must lack any ethical principles and pose a risk to personal safety. This reasoning effectively dehumanizes the stigmatized individual by collapsing their entire identity into a single negative attribute, while simultaneously providing the observer with a rationale for rejection. As Goffman's analysis makes clear, stigma functions not only as a social label but as a psychological mechanism that enables exclusion.

Conclusion

Mead suggested that human interaction combines reactions to social norms with individual responses; however, he did not explore in depth the cognitive or emotional processes involved for the individual. Goffman makes that link explicit, extending Mead's framework to include a more detailed account of how and why people respond as they do to individuals who break social norms through any form of stigma.

Georg Simmel's ideas are also related to Goffman's, particularly Simmel's concept of the "stranger" — someone considered to exist outside society's norms. This parallels the way Goffman frames stigmatized individuals as rejected from mainstream society because they do not conform to the accepted norm. A key difference, however, is that Simmel's framework presents people outside the norm as simply "other," without necessarily being looked down upon or actively devalued. Goffman's analysis is more contemporary in that it examines the issue in greater depth and recognizes the significance of human psychology. Much like the contrast with Mead, comparing Simmel with Goffman reveals that Goffman is distinctively concerned with the psychological reasons that explain why people respond to stigma the way they do.

Goffman's ideas on stigma build on the foundations laid by Mead and Simmel, but extend them in important ways. Goffman provides a more detailed examination of stigma — particularly regarding the motivations behind stigma responses and the psychology of exclusion — and offers a framework that centers the individual's cognitive and emotional experience. By bridging social theory and psychological insight, Goffman's Stigma remains one of the most illuminating accounts of how difference is socially constructed and socially punished.

Goffman, E. Stigma. New York: Touchstone, 1986.