Perceived Stigma, Social Identity, and Group Norms as Predictors of Prosocial Giving in a Fandom

People engage in helping behavior for a variety of reasons. Currently unstudied, however, is the role that group stigmatization may play in motivating this helping behavior. Increased perceptions or feelings of stigma have been shown to increase identification with one's group identity through the rejection-identification model. Other research shows that group identification is associated with greater adherence to group norms, specifically, injunctive norms. If a group's norms are prosocial ones, it therefore follows that group stigma should be associated with prosocial behavior. The authors propose and test this model in this article relating to the perceived stigma to prosocial behavior in a rarely-studied, highly-stigmatized fan community with strong prosocial norms: fans of My Little Pony. Serial mediation analysis supports this model. Implications and directions for future research in light of these findings are discussed.