British Journal of Social Psychology (2000), 39, 129±146 Printed in Great Britain # 2000 The British Psychological Society 129 Social categorizations, social comparisons and stigma: Presentations of self in people with learning di¬culties W. M. L. Finlay* and E. Lyons University of Surrey, UK Self-categorization theory stresses the importance of the context in which the meta- contrast principle is proposed to operate. This study is concerned with how `the pool of psychologically relevant stimuli ’ (Turner, Hogg, Oakes, Reicher & Wetherell, 1987, p. 47) comprising the context is determined. Data from interviews with 33 people with learning di¬culties were used to show how a positive sense of self might be constructed by members of a stigmatized social category through the social worlds that they describe, and therefore the social comparisons and categorizations that are made possible. Participants made downward comparisons which focused on people with learning di¬culties who were less able or who displayed challenging behaviour, and with people who did not have learning di¬culties but who, according to the participants, behaved badly, such as beggars, drunks and thieves. By selection of dimensions and comparison others, a positive sense of self and a particular set of social categorizations were presented. It is suggested that when using self-categorization theory to study real-world social categories, more attention needs to be paid to the involvement of the perceiver in determining which stimuli are psychologically relevant since this is a crucial determinant of category salience. This study explores the concept of social category salience in self-categorization theory (Turner, 1985; Turner et al ., 1987) in the context of a real-world, negatively evaluated social category. It is argued that when applying this aspect of the theory to such a category, it becomes apparent that the nature of the comparative context, in which the principle of meta-contrast is proposed to operate, is to a large extent dependent on the perceiver. The concept of accessibility, therefore, which is usually taken to refer to categorical selection given a particular set of stimuli, should more explicitly be applied to the question of which contextual stimuli are selected for attention in the ®rst place. The relationship between the concepts of accessibility and comparative ®t are explored in interviews with people with learning di¬culties, an example of a social category in which the lives of its members are to a large extent organized around this membership, who often participate in segregated activities, and who might be expected to experience a negative social identity because of the stigmatized nature of the category. `People with learning di¬culties }learning disabilities ’ is the term used most often * Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr W. M. Finlay, SPERI, Department of Psychology, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 5XH, UK.