The Impact of the Combined Influence of Perceived Discrimination on the Basis of Caste and Economic Class on Self-Efficacy

Abstract

Despite the progress India has made over the past few decades, economic class and caste-based discrimination exist to this day. We conducted a natural experiment in which four groups of participants were studied based on both economic class and caste which resulted in the following groups – (those belonging to lower economic class, those belonging to lower caste, those belonging to both lower caste and lower economic class and those not a member of either lower caste or lower economic class). The Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) was administered to study the difference in the level of perceived discrimination among these four groups. All four groups were classified into high and low perceived discrimination based on EDS scores. Self-efficacy was then assessed to understand the influence of varying levels of discrimination (high and low) in all the groups. The findings of the study indicated that the group whose members belong to the lower economic class had higher scores on the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS) than the group whose members belong to both lower caste and lower economic class. The findings of the study also indicated that discrimination on various grounds affects self-efficacy. However, the participants in all groups scored at the higher end of the average range of the self-efficacy scale. Furthermore, the impact on self-efficacy did not differ with the difference in the level of discrimination in each of the four groups. No significant difference was found in the self-efficacy among the individuals across the four groups who had perceived high levels of discrimination.