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Psychological essentialism and its association with stigmatization
Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 95–100
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Psychological essentialism and its association with stigmatization Andrew J. Howell ⇑, Brittany A. Weikum, Heather L. Dyck Department of Psychology, Grant MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 2P2
a r t i c l e
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Article history: Received 29 June 2010 Received in revised form 21 August 2010 Accepted 3 September 2010 Available online 29 September 2010 Keywords: Essentialism Stigma Mental disorder Substance abuse
a b s t r a c t The present research examined the relationship between individual differences in essentialist beliefs and stigmatizing attitudes. In three cross-sectional studies, undergraduate students (Ns = 171, 197, and 200) completed measures of essentialism and stigmatizing attitudes towards people with either mental disorder or substance abuse. Results consistently showed that those who endorsed essentialist beliefs harboured more stigmatizing attitudes. Results are considered in terms of stigma reduction approaches. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Stigmatizing attitudes add substantially to the burden experienced by people with mental disorders (Hinshaw & Stier, 2008). People labelled as mentally disordered experience reduced access to employment and housing opportunities, receive poorer medical care, and undergo higher rates of arrest and incarceration (Corrigan, 2004). Additionally, they face rejection by peers, family members, and even caregivers within mental health services (Corrigan, 2004). Internalization of negative societal messages leads to decreases in self-esteem, life satisfaction, and usage of mental health services, as well as increases in suicidality and substance abuse (Corrigan, 2004; Hinshaw & Stier, 2008). Stigmatizing attitudes may be increasing (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000), further reinforcing the importance of understanding such attitudes in order to reduce this insidious form of social rejection. 1.1. Psychological essentialism and stigma Psychological essentialism is conceptualized as the tendency to ‘‘[ascribe] a fixed, underlying nature to members of a category, which is understood to determine their identity, explain their observable properties, render them functionally alike, and allow many inferences to be drawn about them” (Haslam, Bastian, Bain, & Kashima, 2006, p. 64). Essentialism has widespread implications for social psychological phenomena including stigma. ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Department of Psychology, Grant MacEwan University, P.O. Box 1796, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 2P2. Tel.: +1 780 497 5329; fax: +1 780 497 5308. E-mail address: [email protected] (A.J. Howell). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.09.006
Haslam, Rothschild, and Ernst (2000; see also Haslam, 1998) suggested that essentialist beliefs consist of several distinct facets: membership in a category is conceptualized as being immutable, and as having an inherent, biological nature; group membership is perceivably discrete, having discontinuous boundaries between categories, and is both deeply informative, allowing additional inferences to be made concerning attributes and behaviors, and exclusive, precluding membership in other categories; additionally, group membership is seen as natural and historically invariant, with all group members sharing homogenous or uniform character traits that are necessary features of the category. Research has supported the association between essentialist beliefs and the tendency to endorse stereotypical attributes of social categories (Prentice & Miller, 2007). Bastian and Haslam (2007) demonstrated that individual differences in essentialism were associated with a preference for stereotype-consistent information and Bastian and Haslam (2006) found that essentialist beliefs were associated with stereotype endorsement across various social categories. In other research, people endorsing essentialist beliefs attributed greater humanness to in-groups as opposed to outgroups (Haslam, Bain, Douge, Lee, & Bastian, 2005). Haslam et al. (2000) showed that aspects of essentialist thinking were associated with negative evaluations of social groups. Haslam, Rothschild, and Ernst (2002) demonstrated an association between essence-based beliefs and homophobic (but not sexist or racist) attitudes (see also Haslam & Levy, 2006). Finally, similar effects have been documented for an overlapping but more circumscribed concept, implicit theories, which posits that people differ on the extent to which personal attributes are viewed as fixed or malleable (Dweck, 1999). Entity theorists (i.e., those who believe that personal attributes are fixed) endorse stereotypic judgments and attitudes to a greater
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degree than incremental theorists (i.e., those who believe that attributes are malleable; see Haslam et al., 2006; Molden & Dweck, 2006, for reviews). Three recent studies suggest that essentialist beliefs may be associated with perceptions of those with mental disorder. Haslam and Ernst (2002) provided participants with summaries that favoured a view of mental disorder as (variously) discrete, immutable, natural, informative, or uniform. Participants then rated how such information would modify their beliefs regarding mental disorders. Results showed that the manipulation of one facet of essentialist thinking led to additional essentialist inferences (e.g., manipulating beliefs about naturalness induced related beliefs about discreteness). Ahn, Flanagan, Marsh, and Sanislow (2006) had undergraduate students and mental health professionals judge mental and physical disorders as to the existence of necessary and sufficient features of the disorders, the causes of the disorders, the categorical or dimensional nature of the disorders, and the naturalness versus cultural creation of the disorders. Both groups endorsed the existence of necessary and sufficient features for mental disorders. Lay judges, but not professionals, endorsed the notion that mental disorders have causal essences. Experts viewed a categorical depiction of mental disorders as more congenial than did novices. Both groups viewed mental disorders as existing less ‘‘naturally” in the real world than physical disorders. Finally, Phelan (2005) examined the impact of essentialist beliefs on different aspects of stigma towards individuals depicted as having schizophrenia or depression. Essentialist thinking was induced by providing participants with vignettes stating whether the cause of a disorder was genetic or not. After reading the statements, participants’ ratings of stigma-relevant beliefs, attitudes, and behavioural orientations were obtained. An induced essentialist viewpoint was associated with lowered punishment but also with heightened perceptions of seriousness, differentness, and family members’ vulnerability. 1.2. The current research No research has directly examined whether individual differences in the endorsement of essentialist beliefs are related to stigmatizing attitudes toward people with mental disorder. Haslam and Ernst (2002) made a call for such research: ‘‘Future work should draw out the relationships between essentialist beliefs on the one hand and stigmatizing attitudes toward and distorted perceptions of the mentally disordered on the other” (p. 641). Study 1 tested the hypothesis that essentialist thinking positively co-varies with stigmatizing attitudes toward those with mental disorders. Several measures of stigmatizing attitudes were employed in order to assess the robustness of the association with essentialist thinking. Implicit theories were also assessed as an alternative individual differences variable related to essentialist thinking (Haslam et al., 2006). And, due to the sensitive nature of stigmatization toward vulnerable populations, the response bias of social desirability was controlled. 2. Study 1 2.1. Method 2.1.1. Participants Participants were 171 students enrolled in introductory psychology courses at a Canadian university. Their average age was 20.01 years, with a range from 16 to 38; 53.2% of the sample was male. First-year students comprised 61.4% of the sample, while 28.7% were in their second year. Canada was the country of birth of 84.8% of participants.
2.1.2. Measures Essentialism Index. Bastian and Haslam (2006) developed a 23-item scale measuring three components of essentialist beliefs toward people in general: biological basis (eight items, e.g., ‘‘Very few traits that people exhibit can be traced to their biology”), discreteness (eight items, e.g., ‘‘A person either has a certain attribute or they do not”), and informativeness (seven items, e.g., ‘‘It is possible to know many aspects of a person once you become familiar with a few of their basic traits”). Items from the three subscales were randomly ordered and rated on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly agree, 6 = strongly disagree). Items were reverse-scored where appropriate so that higher scores indicated stronger endorsement of essentialist beliefs, and then summed across the three subscales, creating an overall Essentialism Index. Implicit Theories Index. An eight-item measure of implicit theories (Dweck, 1999) was used to assess incremental and entity beliefs toward people in general. All items (e.g., ‘‘People can substantially change the kind of person they are”; ‘‘Everyone is a certain kind of person, and there is not much that can be done to change that”) were rated on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly agree, 6 = strongly disagree). Items were reverse-scored where necessary and then summed to form an index wherein higher scores represented stronger entity-based beliefs. Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill (CAMI). The CAMI (Taylor & Dear, 1981) is a 40-item scale composed of four subscales, two of which (benevolence and community mental health ideology) assess attitudes supportive of community inclusion of those with mental disorder and two of which (authoritarianism and social restrictiveness) assess attitudes counter to such inclusion. Items are rated from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). A total score was calculated for which high scores indicate an increasing tendency to endorse stigmatizing attitudes (Taylor & Dear, 1981). Brief Opinions about Mental Illness (OMI). The OMI (Cohen & Struening, 1962) is a 70-item index analysing five different dimensions of stigma towards those with mental disorder. In the current study, six OMI items related to authoritarianism, benevolence, and social restrictiveness were used to measure attitudes towards mental disorder. Items were rated on a scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree), and were then summed into a total score for which high scores indicated a more negative attitude. Coercion-segregation-fear index. Corrigan, Markowitz, Watson, Rowan, and Kubiak’s (2003) coercion-segregation-fear scale (CSF) is an eight-item index of the emotional reactions and behavioural consequences that the perceived attributes of those with mental disorders may incite. Items are rated on 9-point scale (1 = not at all, 9 = very much). The items were averaged to calculate the final score, with higher scores signifying increasingly negative reactions towards those experiencing mental disorders. Perceived Dangerousness/Social Distance Scale (PDSD). Link, Cullen, Frank, and Wozniak (1987) developed two scales to measure the desired social distance from, and perceived dangerousness of, those with mental disorders. The first scale, measuring perceived dangerousness, consists of eight items rated on Likert scales ranging from 0 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). The second scale, measuring social distance desired from those with mental disorders, consists of seven items rated on scales ranging from 0 (definitely willing) to 3 (definitely unwilling). The two scales were summed and averaged, with higher scores indicating more negative evaluations. Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR). The BIDR (Paulhus, 1984) measures socially desirable responding using two 20-item subscales: self-deceptive enhancement and impression management. Items are rated on scales ranging from 1 to 7 (1 = not true, 4 = somewhat, 7 = very true). Scores for each subscale are calculated by recoding ratings of one, two, three, and five as
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A.J. Howell et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 95–100 Table 1 Descriptive statistics for variables in Study 1. Variables
M
SD
Observed range
Possible range
a
Essentialism Index EI Informativeness EI Biological Basis EI Discreteness Implicit Beliefs Index CAMI Brief OMI CSF PDSD BIDR – SDE BIDR – IM
72.49 23.54 25.96 23.19 26.84 98.46 12.36 7.92 2.07 4.68 4.73
11.26 4.30 6.51 4.67 7.09 16.70 5.19 3.13 0.63 3.34 3.68
37.00–100.00 12.00–34.00 8.00–41.00 11.00–37.00 8.00–48.00 49.00–144.00 6.00–27.00 2.00–18.00 0.60–4.07 0.00–16.00 0.00–17.00
23.00–148.00 7.00–42.00 8.00–48.00 8.00–48.00 8.00–48.00 40.00–200.00 6.00–36.00 2.00–18.00 0.00–4.07 0.00–20.00 0.00–20.00
0.80 0.55 0.86 0.63 0.90 0.92 0.86 0.91 0.87 0.73 0.80
Note. CAMI = Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill; Brief OMI = Brief Opinions about Mental Illness; CSF = coercion-segregation-fear; PDSD = Perceived Dangerousness/Social Distance; BIDR – SDE = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Self-Deceptive Enhancement; BIDR – IM = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Impression Management.
Table 2 Pearson inter-correlations among variables in Study 1. Variables
1
1. Essentialism Index 2. EI Informativeness 3. EI Biological Basis 4. EI Discreteness 5. Implicit Beliefs Index 6. CAMI 7. Brief OMI 8. CSF 9. PDSD 10. BIDR – SDE 11. BIDR – IM
–
2 0.56** 0.79** 0.78** 0.29** 0.24** 0.24** 0.22** 0.19* 0.08 0.04
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
– .10 0.34** 0.08 0.18* 0.07 0.24** 0.25** 0.10 0.12
– 0.40** 0.26** 0.14 0.15 0.15 0.08 0.19* 0.01
– 0.27** 0.18* 0.28** 0.12 0.12 0.05 0.01
– 0.06 0.12 0.01 0.05 0.22** 0.09
– 0.58** 0.57** 0.73** 0.20* 0.10
– 0.31** 0.40** 0.28** 0.19*
– 0.65** 0.13 0.15
– 0.02 0.02
– 0.48**
Note. CAMI = Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill; Brief OMI = Brief Opinions about Mental Illness; CSF = coercion-segregation-fear; PDSD = Perceived Dangerousness/Social Distance; BIDR – SDE = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Self-Deceptive Enhancement; BIDR – IM = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Impression Management. * p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01.
‘‘0”, and ratings of six and seven as ‘‘1”, and then summing. Higher scores denote more socially desirable responding. 2.1.3. Procedure Students participated as part of the research credit available to them in their introductory psychology courses. Participants completed the package of measures in a single fixed order: Implicit Theories Index, Essentialism Index, PDSD, CSF, CAMI, Brief OMI, and the BIDR. One additional measure unrelated to the current study was completed immediately following the Essentialism Index (specifically, a measure of mindfulness). Participants were also asked to indicate their sex, age, year of study and whether or not their country of birth was Canada.1 3. Results Descriptive statistics are reported in Table 1. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were generally high; lower values for the discreteness and informativeness facets of essentialism were in line with prior findings (Bastian & Haslam, 2006). No differences emerged on mean scores between male and female participants with the exception of the Implicit Theories Index, for which women (M = 28.71, SD = 7.25) 1 Study 1 also included an experimental manipulation, immediately prior to the completion of the stigma measures, in which a random half of participants read a scenario in which a person with schizophrenia was subjected to mandatory outpatient treatment, whereas the remaining half read a scenario in which the person underwent voluntary treatment. This manipulation had no effect on any of the dependent variables, and therefore is not discussed further herein.
obtained higher scores than men (M = 25.63, SD = 6.69), t(156) = 2.77, p < 0.01. Pearson inter-correlations among variables are reported in Table 2. In line with the hypothesis, the Essentialism Index was significantly correlated with all stigma measures, such that higher essentialism beliefs were associated with more stigmatizing attitudes. The informativeness and discreteness subscales of the Essentialism Index showed significant associations with stigma measures; the biological basis subscale did not. Because social desirability scores occasionally correlated with the essentialism scales (see Table 2), we conducted partial correlation analyses controlling for self-deceptive enhancement and impression management. The Essentialism Index continued to correlate with CAMI scores, r = 0.24, p < 0.05, and with CSF scores, r = 0.22, p < 0.05. Correlations with Brief OMI and PDSD scores were both r = 0.19, p = 0.06. The informativeness facet of the essentialism measure continued to correlate with CAMI scores, r = 0.27, with CSF scores, r = 0.29, and with PDSD scores, r = 0.25, all ps < 0.01. The discreteness facet of the essentialism measure continued to correlate with CAMI scores, r = 0.21, p < 0.05 and with Brief OMI scores, r = 0.32, p < 0.01.
4. Discussion As predicted, individuals who endorsed essentialist beliefs were more likely to report stigmatizing attitudes towards those with mental disorders. These relationships held across various measures of stigmatizing attitudes, and persisted when controlling for socially desirable responding. Relationships with stigmatizing
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attitudes were found for the overall Essentialism Index and for its informativeness and discreteness facets, but not for its biological basis facet. Also, immutability beliefs as assessed with the Implicit Theories Index did not correlate with stigmatizing attitudes. Indeed, other research has shown a dissociation between immutability beliefs and other aspects of essentialist thinking: Haslam and Levy (2006) showed no association between immutability beliefs and negative attitudes towards homosexuals, whereas discreteness beliefs were associated with such attitudes, and Haslam and Ernst (2002) showed that manipulating other aspects of essentialist beliefs did not affect perceptions of immutability. In Study 2, we strove to replicate the association between essentialist thinking and stigmatizing attitudes toward those with mental disorders; in this aim, we employed the Essentialism Index and the CAMI in Study 2a. We also sought to determine whether a similar relationship would emerge when essentialist thinking was examined in relation to attitudes toward those with substance use disorders; in this aim, we employed the Essentialism Index and the Community Attitudes toward Substance Abusers (Hayes et al., 2004) in Study 2b. Based on evidence of significant relationships between essentialist thinking and perceptions of various types of psychological disorders from past studies (Ahn et al., 2006; Haslam & Ernst, 2002; Phelan, 2005), the hypothesis tested in Study 2 was that essentialist thinking would positively co-vary with stigmatizing attitudes toward those with mental disorder (Study 2a) and substance use disorder (Study 2b). 5. Studies 2a and 2b
from 17 to 50 years, with a mean age of 20.8 years. Eighty-nine percent were Canadian-born and 64.5% were in their first year of studies. Participants in Study 2b were 200 introductory psychology students (68% female) at the same university, ranging in age from 17 to 35 years, with a mean age of 19.9 years. Ninety percent were Canadian-born and 62.1% were in their first year of studies. 5.1.2. Measures In Studies 2a and 2b, the Essentialism Index and BIDR were employed as in Study 1. To measure stigmatizing attitudes, Study 2a employed the CAMI, whereas Study 2b employed the Community Attitudes toward Substance Abusers (CASA; Hayes et al., 2004). Based closely on the CAMI, the CASA simply alters terminology to reflect stigma toward substance abusers. Specifically, the term ‘‘mentally ill” was replaced with ‘‘drug addicts and alcoholics”, the term ‘‘mental health facilities” with ‘‘treatment facilities for drug addicts and alcoholics”, and the term ‘‘mental disturbance” with ‘‘drug and alcohol addictions”. 5.1.3. Procedure Students completed one version of the study or the other (i.e., CAMI or CASA) on the basis of whether their birthday fell on an even or odd day of the month. Participants completed measures in a single, fixed order: Essentialism Index, CAMI or CASA, and the BIDR. Other measures pertaining to a separate study (specifically, measures of mindfulness and well-being) were completed immediately prior to the measures of interest here. Participants also reported their age, sex, year of study, and whether their country of birth was inside or outside of Canada.
5.1. Method 6. Results 5.1.1. Participants Participants in Study 2a were 197 introductory psychology students (64% female) at a Canadian University. They ranged in age
Descriptive statistics for Studies 2a and 2b are reported in Table 3 and reveal strong convergence (e.g., with respect to mean scores)
Table 3 Descriptive statistics for variables in Study 2a and Study 2b. Variables
Essentialism Index EI Informativeness EI Biological Basis EI Discreteness CAMI (2a) or CASA (2b) BIDR – SDE BIDR – SM
Study 2a
Study 2b
M
SD
Observed range
a
M
SD
Observed range
a
75.96 24.33 27.22 24.01 97.84 4.48 4.71
14.05 4.89 6.80 5.42 18.13 3.12 3.51
43.00–128.00 10.00–40.00 9.00–48.00 9.00–42.00 45.00–140.00 0.00–14.00 0.00–17.00
0.85 0.55 0.85 0.67 0.90 0.69 0.79
75.20 23.97 27.22 23.82 114.89 4.62 4.68
12.91 4.89 6.50 5.30 16.18 3.40 3.22
35.00–110.00 7.00–35.00 8.00–48.00 11.00–36.00 63.00–165.00 0.00–16.00 0.00–15.00
0.83 0.58 0.84 0.66 0.87 0.72 0.78
Note. Possible ranges for variables appear in Table 1. EI = Essentialism Index; CAMI = Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill; CASA = Community Attitudes toward Substance Abusers; BIDR – SDE = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Self-Deceptive Enhancement; BIDR – IM = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Impression Management.
Table 4 Pearson inter-correlations among variables in Study 2a and Study 2b. Variables
1
2
3
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
– 0.77** 0.80** 0.82** 0.23** 0.09 0.03
0.72** – 0.35** 0.60** 0.22** 0.07 0.06
0.77** 0.27** – 0.41** 0.14 0.06 0.02
Essentialism Index EI Informativeness EI Biological Basis EI Discreteness CAMI (2a) or CASA (2b) BIDR – SDE BIDR – IM
4
5 0.79** 0.46** 0.39**
0.37** 0.20** 0.34** 0.28**
– 0.20** 0.11 0.01
– 0.10 0.06
6
7
0.13 0.19* 0.00 0.07 0.09 – 0.37**
0.04 0.00 0.09 0.00 0.15 0.45** –
Note. Correlations below the diagonal are from Study 2a and those above the diagonal are from Study 2b. EI = Essentialism Index; CAMI = Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill; CASA = Community Attitudes toward Substance Abusers; BIDR – SDE = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Self-Deceptive Enhancement; BIDR – IM = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Impression Management. * p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01.
A.J. Howell et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 95–100
across variables common to the two subsamples as well as convergence with variables in common with Study 1. No differences emerged on mean scores between male and female participants with the following exceptions: in Study 2a, men (M = 102.54, SD = 18.71) scored higher than women (M = 95.72, SD = 16.80) on the CAMI, t(168) = 2.44, p < 0.05 and men (M = 5.06, SD = 3.50) scored higher than women (M = 4.00, SD = 2.71) on self-deceptive enhancement, t(172) = 2.23, p < 0.05; in Study 2b, men (M = 5.39, SD = 3.52) scored higher than women (M = 4.21, SD = 3.26) on self-deceptive enhancement, t(172) = 2.16, p < 0.05. Correlations among variables for Studies 2a and 2b are reported in Table 4. In both subsamples, significant associations arose between essentialist beliefs (specifically, the overall index and both the discreteness and informativeness subscales) and stigmatizing attitudes, replicating the pattern found in Study 1. The biological basis subscale also correlated with stigmatizing attitudes toward substance abusers in Study 2b. Finally, with a lone exception, BIDR scores did not correlate with the essentialism or stigma scales, precluding the necessity for partial correlation analyses.
7. General discussion The current studies establish that individual differences in essentialist thinking correlate directly with stigmatizing attitudes concerning mental disorder. In Study 1, correlations involving the overall Essentialism Index were stable across various measures of stigmatizing attitudes toward those with mental disorders. In Study 2a and Study 2b, such correlations were also shown to be stable across measures of attitudes toward mental disorder and substance abuse. In both studies employing the CAMI (i.e., Study 1 and Study 2a), informativeness and discreteness facets of the essentialism measure correlated with stigmatizing attitudes; in the study employing the CASA (i.e., Study 2b) all three facets (i.e., including biological basis) were associated with higher stigmatizing attitudes. Finally, in both studies, socially desirable responding was shown not to account for the observed relationship between essentialist thinking and stigmatizing attitudes. It is paradoxical that essence-based thinking is associated with stigmatizing attitudes toward mental disorders and yet many stigma reduction programs use the approach ‘‘mental illness is an illness like any other”, likening mental disorders to medical disorders (Read, 2007; Read, Haslam, Sayce, & Davies, 2006). By framing mental or substance disorders as diseases, these programs anticipate that stigma and discrimination should decrease; that is, if mental disorders are attributed to factors outside of an individual’s personal control, blameworthiness should decrease, reducing society’s negative view toward such disorders (Read, 2007; Read et al., 2006). However, contrary to theoretical underpinnings, biogenetic models of mental disorders have not functioned to reduce stigma, even at times increasing the negative perception of those suffering from mental disorders (Read, 2007; Read et al., 2006). The ‘‘mental illness is an illness like any other” model for stigma reduction may increase stigma by strengthening essentialist assumptions (e.g., discreteness, informativeness, or biological basis) among those who already hold these beliefs and, in others, by germinating such beliefs in the first place. Conceptualizations which de-emphasize how informative, discrete, or biologically-based a disorder is may be less congenial with negative attitudes. For example, Riskind, Bombardier, and Ayers (2006) argued that a social-cognitive conceptualization of schizophrenia may be more empowering than a biological conceptualization, in part because symptoms are normalized within the former framework. By extension, others may view people with schizophrenia as less categorically or biologically distinct, and their symptoms less informative of other attributes, to the extent that
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their symptoms can be viewed as continuous with the experiences of everyone else. Read et al. (2006) argued that biological explanations may be associated with reduced perceptions of the autonomy of those with mental disorder, and also of their ability to evidence good judgment. These attributes of persons are centrally related to the psychological needs identified within self-determination theory of autonomy and competence, respectively (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2000). A third important need according to self-determination theory is that of relatedness. It is possible that autonomy, competence, and relatedness capture the major areas of deficits perceived to characterize those with mental disorders. Moreover, it is possible that essentialist thinking is associated with low ratings of perceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness when judgments are made of those having a mental disorder. This may be a fruitful line of further investigation concerning essentialist thinking and stigmatization. Given the generalized nature of essentialist beliefs as operationalized herein (i.e., the essentialism measure did not itself directly concern mental disorder), essentialist beliefs should show systematic relationships with many other attributes. Essentialist beliefs may, for example, be associated with reduced levels of compassion or willingness to act altruistically toward others. Individual differences in essentialist beliefs may correlate with lower levels of openness, self-acceptance, and optimism. Essentialist beliefs may be associated with language preferences when referring to people with mental disorders (e.g., use of the term ‘‘schizophrenic”). 7.1. Limitations The samples employed in the current research (i.e., introductory psychology students) leave open the question as to whether the findings generalize to other student or general populations. Effect sizes of relationships between essentialist beliefs and stigmatizing attitudes were modest. Also, as the current studies were cross-sectional, the direction of the relationship cannot be determined; it is possible that essentialist beliefs are a consequence of stigmatizing attitudes, or that a third variable is responsible for the relationship between the two. This study relied on self-report measures of essentialism and attitudes. Further research could address this limitation by incorporating behavioural or implicit measures of stigma. It would also be informative to establish a relationship between essentialism and stigmatizing attitudes while controlling for other correlates of such attitudes, such as right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation (Bastian & Haslam, 2006). Additionally, exploring the relationship between essentialist beliefs and stigma from the perspective of those with mental disorders could have interesting implications for self-stigma and attempts to eradicate it. References Ahn, W., Flanagan, E. H., Marsh, J. K., & Sanislow, C. A. (2006). Beliefs about essences and the reality of mental disorders. Psychological Science, 17, 759–766. Bastian, B., & Haslam, N. (2006). Psychological essentialism and stereotype endorsement. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 228–235. Bastian, B., & Haslam, N. (2007). Psychological essentialism and attention allocation: Preferences for stereotype-consistent versus stereotypeinconsistent information. Journal of Social Psychology, 147, 531–541. Cohen, J., & Struening, E. L. (1962). Opinions about mental illness in the personnel of two large mental health hospitals. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 64, 349–360. Corrigan, P. (2004). How stigma interferes with mental health care. American Psychologist, 59, 614–625. Corrigan, P., Markowitz, F. E., Watson, A., Rowan, D., & Kubiak, M. A. (2003). An attribution model of public discrimination towards persons with mental illness. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 44, 162–179. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘‘what” and ‘‘why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227–268.
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Link, B. G., Cullen, F. T., Frank, J., & Wozniak, J. F. (1987). The social rejection of former mental patients: Understanding why labels matter. American Journal of Sociology, 92, 1461–1500. Molden, D. C., & Dweck, C. S. (2006). Finding ‘meaning’ in psychology: A lay theories approach to self-regulation, social perception, and social development. American Psychologist, 61, 192–203. Paulhus, D. L. (1984). Two-component models of socially desirable responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46, 598–609. Phelan, J. C. (2005). Geneticization of deviant behavior and consequences for stigma: The case of mental illness. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 46, 307–322. Phelan, J., Link, B., Stueve, A., & Pescosolido, B. (2000). Public conceptions of mental illness in 1950 and 1996: What is mental illness and is it to be feared? Journal of Health and Social Behaviour, 41, 188–207. Prentice, D. A., & Miller, D. T. (2007). Psychological essentialism of human categories. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16, 202–206. Read, J. (2007). Why promoting biological ideology increases prejudice against people labeled ‘‘schizophrenic”. Australian Psychologist, 42, 118–128. Read, J., Haslam, N., Sayce, L., & Davies, E. (2006). Prejudice and schizophrenia: A review of the ‘mental illness is an illness like any other’ approach. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica, 114, 303–318. Riskind, J. H., Bombardier, M., & Ayers, C. (2006). Perceiving normality in clients as a potent social-cognitive treatment approach. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 25, 249–260. Taylor, S. M., & Dear, M. J. (1981). Scaling community attitudes toward the mentally ill. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 7, 225–240.
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Psychological essentialism and its association with stigmatization Andrew J. Howell ⇑, Brittany A. Weikum, Heather L. Dyck Department of Psychology, Grant MacEwan University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 2P2
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history: Received 29 June 2010 Received in revised form 21 August 2010 Accepted 3 September 2010 Available online 29 September 2010 Keywords: Essentialism Stigma Mental disorder Substance abuse
a b s t r a c t The present research examined the relationship between individual differences in essentialist beliefs and stigmatizing attitudes. In three cross-sectional studies, undergraduate students (Ns = 171, 197, and 200) completed measures of essentialism and stigmatizing attitudes towards people with either mental disorder or substance abuse. Results consistently showed that those who endorsed essentialist beliefs harboured more stigmatizing attitudes. Results are considered in terms of stigma reduction approaches. Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction Stigmatizing attitudes add substantially to the burden experienced by people with mental disorders (Hinshaw & Stier, 2008). People labelled as mentally disordered experience reduced access to employment and housing opportunities, receive poorer medical care, and undergo higher rates of arrest and incarceration (Corrigan, 2004). Additionally, they face rejection by peers, family members, and even caregivers within mental health services (Corrigan, 2004). Internalization of negative societal messages leads to decreases in self-esteem, life satisfaction, and usage of mental health services, as well as increases in suicidality and substance abuse (Corrigan, 2004; Hinshaw & Stier, 2008). Stigmatizing attitudes may be increasing (Phelan, Link, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 2000), further reinforcing the importance of understanding such attitudes in order to reduce this insidious form of social rejection. 1.1. Psychological essentialism and stigma Psychological essentialism is conceptualized as the tendency to ‘‘[ascribe] a fixed, underlying nature to members of a category, which is understood to determine their identity, explain their observable properties, render them functionally alike, and allow many inferences to be drawn about them” (Haslam, Bastian, Bain, & Kashima, 2006, p. 64). Essentialism has widespread implications for social psychological phenomena including stigma. ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: Department of Psychology, Grant MacEwan University, P.O. Box 1796, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 2P2. Tel.: +1 780 497 5329; fax: +1 780 497 5308. E-mail address: [email protected] (A.J. Howell). 0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.09.006
Haslam, Rothschild, and Ernst (2000; see also Haslam, 1998) suggested that essentialist beliefs consist of several distinct facets: membership in a category is conceptualized as being immutable, and as having an inherent, biological nature; group membership is perceivably discrete, having discontinuous boundaries between categories, and is both deeply informative, allowing additional inferences to be made concerning attributes and behaviors, and exclusive, precluding membership in other categories; additionally, group membership is seen as natural and historically invariant, with all group members sharing homogenous or uniform character traits that are necessary features of the category. Research has supported the association between essentialist beliefs and the tendency to endorse stereotypical attributes of social categories (Prentice & Miller, 2007). Bastian and Haslam (2007) demonstrated that individual differences in essentialism were associated with a preference for stereotype-consistent information and Bastian and Haslam (2006) found that essentialist beliefs were associated with stereotype endorsement across various social categories. In other research, people endorsing essentialist beliefs attributed greater humanness to in-groups as opposed to outgroups (Haslam, Bain, Douge, Lee, & Bastian, 2005). Haslam et al. (2000) showed that aspects of essentialist thinking were associated with negative evaluations of social groups. Haslam, Rothschild, and Ernst (2002) demonstrated an association between essence-based beliefs and homophobic (but not sexist or racist) attitudes (see also Haslam & Levy, 2006). Finally, similar effects have been documented for an overlapping but more circumscribed concept, implicit theories, which posits that people differ on the extent to which personal attributes are viewed as fixed or malleable (Dweck, 1999). Entity theorists (i.e., those who believe that personal attributes are fixed) endorse stereotypic judgments and attitudes to a greater
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degree than incremental theorists (i.e., those who believe that attributes are malleable; see Haslam et al., 2006; Molden & Dweck, 2006, for reviews). Three recent studies suggest that essentialist beliefs may be associated with perceptions of those with mental disorder. Haslam and Ernst (2002) provided participants with summaries that favoured a view of mental disorder as (variously) discrete, immutable, natural, informative, or uniform. Participants then rated how such information would modify their beliefs regarding mental disorders. Results showed that the manipulation of one facet of essentialist thinking led to additional essentialist inferences (e.g., manipulating beliefs about naturalness induced related beliefs about discreteness). Ahn, Flanagan, Marsh, and Sanislow (2006) had undergraduate students and mental health professionals judge mental and physical disorders as to the existence of necessary and sufficient features of the disorders, the causes of the disorders, the categorical or dimensional nature of the disorders, and the naturalness versus cultural creation of the disorders. Both groups endorsed the existence of necessary and sufficient features for mental disorders. Lay judges, but not professionals, endorsed the notion that mental disorders have causal essences. Experts viewed a categorical depiction of mental disorders as more congenial than did novices. Both groups viewed mental disorders as existing less ‘‘naturally” in the real world than physical disorders. Finally, Phelan (2005) examined the impact of essentialist beliefs on different aspects of stigma towards individuals depicted as having schizophrenia or depression. Essentialist thinking was induced by providing participants with vignettes stating whether the cause of a disorder was genetic or not. After reading the statements, participants’ ratings of stigma-relevant beliefs, attitudes, and behavioural orientations were obtained. An induced essentialist viewpoint was associated with lowered punishment but also with heightened perceptions of seriousness, differentness, and family members’ vulnerability. 1.2. The current research No research has directly examined whether individual differences in the endorsement of essentialist beliefs are related to stigmatizing attitudes toward people with mental disorder. Haslam and Ernst (2002) made a call for such research: ‘‘Future work should draw out the relationships between essentialist beliefs on the one hand and stigmatizing attitudes toward and distorted perceptions of the mentally disordered on the other” (p. 641). Study 1 tested the hypothesis that essentialist thinking positively co-varies with stigmatizing attitudes toward those with mental disorders. Several measures of stigmatizing attitudes were employed in order to assess the robustness of the association with essentialist thinking. Implicit theories were also assessed as an alternative individual differences variable related to essentialist thinking (Haslam et al., 2006). And, due to the sensitive nature of stigmatization toward vulnerable populations, the response bias of social desirability was controlled. 2. Study 1 2.1. Method 2.1.1. Participants Participants were 171 students enrolled in introductory psychology courses at a Canadian university. Their average age was 20.01 years, with a range from 16 to 38; 53.2% of the sample was male. First-year students comprised 61.4% of the sample, while 28.7% were in their second year. Canada was the country of birth of 84.8% of participants.
2.1.2. Measures Essentialism Index. Bastian and Haslam (2006) developed a 23-item scale measuring three components of essentialist beliefs toward people in general: biological basis (eight items, e.g., ‘‘Very few traits that people exhibit can be traced to their biology”), discreteness (eight items, e.g., ‘‘A person either has a certain attribute or they do not”), and informativeness (seven items, e.g., ‘‘It is possible to know many aspects of a person once you become familiar with a few of their basic traits”). Items from the three subscales were randomly ordered and rated on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly agree, 6 = strongly disagree). Items were reverse-scored where appropriate so that higher scores indicated stronger endorsement of essentialist beliefs, and then summed across the three subscales, creating an overall Essentialism Index. Implicit Theories Index. An eight-item measure of implicit theories (Dweck, 1999) was used to assess incremental and entity beliefs toward people in general. All items (e.g., ‘‘People can substantially change the kind of person they are”; ‘‘Everyone is a certain kind of person, and there is not much that can be done to change that”) were rated on a 6-point scale (1 = strongly agree, 6 = strongly disagree). Items were reverse-scored where necessary and then summed to form an index wherein higher scores represented stronger entity-based beliefs. Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill (CAMI). The CAMI (Taylor & Dear, 1981) is a 40-item scale composed of four subscales, two of which (benevolence and community mental health ideology) assess attitudes supportive of community inclusion of those with mental disorder and two of which (authoritarianism and social restrictiveness) assess attitudes counter to such inclusion. Items are rated from 1 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). A total score was calculated for which high scores indicate an increasing tendency to endorse stigmatizing attitudes (Taylor & Dear, 1981). Brief Opinions about Mental Illness (OMI). The OMI (Cohen & Struening, 1962) is a 70-item index analysing five different dimensions of stigma towards those with mental disorder. In the current study, six OMI items related to authoritarianism, benevolence, and social restrictiveness were used to measure attitudes towards mental disorder. Items were rated on a scale from 1 (strongly agree) to 6 (strongly disagree), and were then summed into a total score for which high scores indicated a more negative attitude. Coercion-segregation-fear index. Corrigan, Markowitz, Watson, Rowan, and Kubiak’s (2003) coercion-segregation-fear scale (CSF) is an eight-item index of the emotional reactions and behavioural consequences that the perceived attributes of those with mental disorders may incite. Items are rated on 9-point scale (1 = not at all, 9 = very much). The items were averaged to calculate the final score, with higher scores signifying increasingly negative reactions towards those experiencing mental disorders. Perceived Dangerousness/Social Distance Scale (PDSD). Link, Cullen, Frank, and Wozniak (1987) developed two scales to measure the desired social distance from, and perceived dangerousness of, those with mental disorders. The first scale, measuring perceived dangerousness, consists of eight items rated on Likert scales ranging from 0 (strongly agree) to 5 (strongly disagree). The second scale, measuring social distance desired from those with mental disorders, consists of seven items rated on scales ranging from 0 (definitely willing) to 3 (definitely unwilling). The two scales were summed and averaged, with higher scores indicating more negative evaluations. Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR). The BIDR (Paulhus, 1984) measures socially desirable responding using two 20-item subscales: self-deceptive enhancement and impression management. Items are rated on scales ranging from 1 to 7 (1 = not true, 4 = somewhat, 7 = very true). Scores for each subscale are calculated by recoding ratings of one, two, three, and five as
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A.J. Howell et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 95–100 Table 1 Descriptive statistics for variables in Study 1. Variables
M
SD
Observed range
Possible range
a
Essentialism Index EI Informativeness EI Biological Basis EI Discreteness Implicit Beliefs Index CAMI Brief OMI CSF PDSD BIDR – SDE BIDR – IM
72.49 23.54 25.96 23.19 26.84 98.46 12.36 7.92 2.07 4.68 4.73
11.26 4.30 6.51 4.67 7.09 16.70 5.19 3.13 0.63 3.34 3.68
37.00–100.00 12.00–34.00 8.00–41.00 11.00–37.00 8.00–48.00 49.00–144.00 6.00–27.00 2.00–18.00 0.60–4.07 0.00–16.00 0.00–17.00
23.00–148.00 7.00–42.00 8.00–48.00 8.00–48.00 8.00–48.00 40.00–200.00 6.00–36.00 2.00–18.00 0.00–4.07 0.00–20.00 0.00–20.00
0.80 0.55 0.86 0.63 0.90 0.92 0.86 0.91 0.87 0.73 0.80
Note. CAMI = Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill; Brief OMI = Brief Opinions about Mental Illness; CSF = coercion-segregation-fear; PDSD = Perceived Dangerousness/Social Distance; BIDR – SDE = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Self-Deceptive Enhancement; BIDR – IM = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Impression Management.
Table 2 Pearson inter-correlations among variables in Study 1. Variables
1
1. Essentialism Index 2. EI Informativeness 3. EI Biological Basis 4. EI Discreteness 5. Implicit Beliefs Index 6. CAMI 7. Brief OMI 8. CSF 9. PDSD 10. BIDR – SDE 11. BIDR – IM
–
2 0.56** 0.79** 0.78** 0.29** 0.24** 0.24** 0.22** 0.19* 0.08 0.04
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
– .10 0.34** 0.08 0.18* 0.07 0.24** 0.25** 0.10 0.12
– 0.40** 0.26** 0.14 0.15 0.15 0.08 0.19* 0.01
– 0.27** 0.18* 0.28** 0.12 0.12 0.05 0.01
– 0.06 0.12 0.01 0.05 0.22** 0.09
– 0.58** 0.57** 0.73** 0.20* 0.10
– 0.31** 0.40** 0.28** 0.19*
– 0.65** 0.13 0.15
– 0.02 0.02
– 0.48**
Note. CAMI = Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill; Brief OMI = Brief Opinions about Mental Illness; CSF = coercion-segregation-fear; PDSD = Perceived Dangerousness/Social Distance; BIDR – SDE = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Self-Deceptive Enhancement; BIDR – IM = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Impression Management. * p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01.
‘‘0”, and ratings of six and seven as ‘‘1”, and then summing. Higher scores denote more socially desirable responding. 2.1.3. Procedure Students participated as part of the research credit available to them in their introductory psychology courses. Participants completed the package of measures in a single fixed order: Implicit Theories Index, Essentialism Index, PDSD, CSF, CAMI, Brief OMI, and the BIDR. One additional measure unrelated to the current study was completed immediately following the Essentialism Index (specifically, a measure of mindfulness). Participants were also asked to indicate their sex, age, year of study and whether or not their country of birth was Canada.1 3. Results Descriptive statistics are reported in Table 1. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients were generally high; lower values for the discreteness and informativeness facets of essentialism were in line with prior findings (Bastian & Haslam, 2006). No differences emerged on mean scores between male and female participants with the exception of the Implicit Theories Index, for which women (M = 28.71, SD = 7.25) 1 Study 1 also included an experimental manipulation, immediately prior to the completion of the stigma measures, in which a random half of participants read a scenario in which a person with schizophrenia was subjected to mandatory outpatient treatment, whereas the remaining half read a scenario in which the person underwent voluntary treatment. This manipulation had no effect on any of the dependent variables, and therefore is not discussed further herein.
obtained higher scores than men (M = 25.63, SD = 6.69), t(156) = 2.77, p < 0.01. Pearson inter-correlations among variables are reported in Table 2. In line with the hypothesis, the Essentialism Index was significantly correlated with all stigma measures, such that higher essentialism beliefs were associated with more stigmatizing attitudes. The informativeness and discreteness subscales of the Essentialism Index showed significant associations with stigma measures; the biological basis subscale did not. Because social desirability scores occasionally correlated with the essentialism scales (see Table 2), we conducted partial correlation analyses controlling for self-deceptive enhancement and impression management. The Essentialism Index continued to correlate with CAMI scores, r = 0.24, p < 0.05, and with CSF scores, r = 0.22, p < 0.05. Correlations with Brief OMI and PDSD scores were both r = 0.19, p = 0.06. The informativeness facet of the essentialism measure continued to correlate with CAMI scores, r = 0.27, with CSF scores, r = 0.29, and with PDSD scores, r = 0.25, all ps < 0.01. The discreteness facet of the essentialism measure continued to correlate with CAMI scores, r = 0.21, p < 0.05 and with Brief OMI scores, r = 0.32, p < 0.01.
4. Discussion As predicted, individuals who endorsed essentialist beliefs were more likely to report stigmatizing attitudes towards those with mental disorders. These relationships held across various measures of stigmatizing attitudes, and persisted when controlling for socially desirable responding. Relationships with stigmatizing
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attitudes were found for the overall Essentialism Index and for its informativeness and discreteness facets, but not for its biological basis facet. Also, immutability beliefs as assessed with the Implicit Theories Index did not correlate with stigmatizing attitudes. Indeed, other research has shown a dissociation between immutability beliefs and other aspects of essentialist thinking: Haslam and Levy (2006) showed no association between immutability beliefs and negative attitudes towards homosexuals, whereas discreteness beliefs were associated with such attitudes, and Haslam and Ernst (2002) showed that manipulating other aspects of essentialist beliefs did not affect perceptions of immutability. In Study 2, we strove to replicate the association between essentialist thinking and stigmatizing attitudes toward those with mental disorders; in this aim, we employed the Essentialism Index and the CAMI in Study 2a. We also sought to determine whether a similar relationship would emerge when essentialist thinking was examined in relation to attitudes toward those with substance use disorders; in this aim, we employed the Essentialism Index and the Community Attitudes toward Substance Abusers (Hayes et al., 2004) in Study 2b. Based on evidence of significant relationships between essentialist thinking and perceptions of various types of psychological disorders from past studies (Ahn et al., 2006; Haslam & Ernst, 2002; Phelan, 2005), the hypothesis tested in Study 2 was that essentialist thinking would positively co-vary with stigmatizing attitudes toward those with mental disorder (Study 2a) and substance use disorder (Study 2b). 5. Studies 2a and 2b
from 17 to 50 years, with a mean age of 20.8 years. Eighty-nine percent were Canadian-born and 64.5% were in their first year of studies. Participants in Study 2b were 200 introductory psychology students (68% female) at the same university, ranging in age from 17 to 35 years, with a mean age of 19.9 years. Ninety percent were Canadian-born and 62.1% were in their first year of studies. 5.1.2. Measures In Studies 2a and 2b, the Essentialism Index and BIDR were employed as in Study 1. To measure stigmatizing attitudes, Study 2a employed the CAMI, whereas Study 2b employed the Community Attitudes toward Substance Abusers (CASA; Hayes et al., 2004). Based closely on the CAMI, the CASA simply alters terminology to reflect stigma toward substance abusers. Specifically, the term ‘‘mentally ill” was replaced with ‘‘drug addicts and alcoholics”, the term ‘‘mental health facilities” with ‘‘treatment facilities for drug addicts and alcoholics”, and the term ‘‘mental disturbance” with ‘‘drug and alcohol addictions”. 5.1.3. Procedure Students completed one version of the study or the other (i.e., CAMI or CASA) on the basis of whether their birthday fell on an even or odd day of the month. Participants completed measures in a single, fixed order: Essentialism Index, CAMI or CASA, and the BIDR. Other measures pertaining to a separate study (specifically, measures of mindfulness and well-being) were completed immediately prior to the measures of interest here. Participants also reported their age, sex, year of study, and whether their country of birth was inside or outside of Canada.
5.1. Method 6. Results 5.1.1. Participants Participants in Study 2a were 197 introductory psychology students (64% female) at a Canadian University. They ranged in age
Descriptive statistics for Studies 2a and 2b are reported in Table 3 and reveal strong convergence (e.g., with respect to mean scores)
Table 3 Descriptive statistics for variables in Study 2a and Study 2b. Variables
Essentialism Index EI Informativeness EI Biological Basis EI Discreteness CAMI (2a) or CASA (2b) BIDR – SDE BIDR – SM
Study 2a
Study 2b
M
SD
Observed range
a
M
SD
Observed range
a
75.96 24.33 27.22 24.01 97.84 4.48 4.71
14.05 4.89 6.80 5.42 18.13 3.12 3.51
43.00–128.00 10.00–40.00 9.00–48.00 9.00–42.00 45.00–140.00 0.00–14.00 0.00–17.00
0.85 0.55 0.85 0.67 0.90 0.69 0.79
75.20 23.97 27.22 23.82 114.89 4.62 4.68
12.91 4.89 6.50 5.30 16.18 3.40 3.22
35.00–110.00 7.00–35.00 8.00–48.00 11.00–36.00 63.00–165.00 0.00–16.00 0.00–15.00
0.83 0.58 0.84 0.66 0.87 0.72 0.78
Note. Possible ranges for variables appear in Table 1. EI = Essentialism Index; CAMI = Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill; CASA = Community Attitudes toward Substance Abusers; BIDR – SDE = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Self-Deceptive Enhancement; BIDR – IM = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Impression Management.
Table 4 Pearson inter-correlations among variables in Study 2a and Study 2b. Variables
1
2
3
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
– 0.77** 0.80** 0.82** 0.23** 0.09 0.03
0.72** – 0.35** 0.60** 0.22** 0.07 0.06
0.77** 0.27** – 0.41** 0.14 0.06 0.02
Essentialism Index EI Informativeness EI Biological Basis EI Discreteness CAMI (2a) or CASA (2b) BIDR – SDE BIDR – IM
4
5 0.79** 0.46** 0.39**
0.37** 0.20** 0.34** 0.28**
– 0.20** 0.11 0.01
– 0.10 0.06
6
7
0.13 0.19* 0.00 0.07 0.09 – 0.37**
0.04 0.00 0.09 0.00 0.15 0.45** –
Note. Correlations below the diagonal are from Study 2a and those above the diagonal are from Study 2b. EI = Essentialism Index; CAMI = Community Attitudes toward the Mentally Ill; CASA = Community Attitudes toward Substance Abusers; BIDR – SDE = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Self-Deceptive Enhancement; BIDR – IM = Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding – Impression Management. * p < 0.05. ** p < 0.01.
A.J. Howell et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 50 (2011) 95–100
across variables common to the two subsamples as well as convergence with variables in common with Study 1. No differences emerged on mean scores between male and female participants with the following exceptions: in Study 2a, men (M = 102.54, SD = 18.71) scored higher than women (M = 95.72, SD = 16.80) on the CAMI, t(168) = 2.44, p < 0.05 and men (M = 5.06, SD = 3.50) scored higher than women (M = 4.00, SD = 2.71) on self-deceptive enhancement, t(172) = 2.23, p < 0.05; in Study 2b, men (M = 5.39, SD = 3.52) scored higher than women (M = 4.21, SD = 3.26) on self-deceptive enhancement, t(172) = 2.16, p < 0.05. Correlations among variables for Studies 2a and 2b are reported in Table 4. In both subsamples, significant associations arose between essentialist beliefs (specifically, the overall index and both the discreteness and informativeness subscales) and stigmatizing attitudes, replicating the pattern found in Study 1. The biological basis subscale also correlated with stigmatizing attitudes toward substance abusers in Study 2b. Finally, with a lone exception, BIDR scores did not correlate with the essentialism or stigma scales, precluding the necessity for partial correlation analyses.
7. General discussion The current studies establish that individual differences in essentialist thinking correlate directly with stigmatizing attitudes concerning mental disorder. In Study 1, correlations involving the overall Essentialism Index were stable across various measures of stigmatizing attitudes toward those with mental disorders. In Study 2a and Study 2b, such correlations were also shown to be stable across measures of attitudes toward mental disorder and substance abuse. In both studies employing the CAMI (i.e., Study 1 and Study 2a), informativeness and discreteness facets of the essentialism measure correlated with stigmatizing attitudes; in the study employing the CASA (i.e., Study 2b) all three facets (i.e., including biological basis) were associated with higher stigmatizing attitudes. Finally, in both studies, socially desirable responding was shown not to account for the observed relationship between essentialist thinking and stigmatizing attitudes. It is paradoxical that essence-based thinking is associated with stigmatizing attitudes toward mental disorders and yet many stigma reduction programs use the approach ‘‘mental illness is an illness like any other”, likening mental disorders to medical disorders (Read, 2007; Read, Haslam, Sayce, & Davies, 2006). By framing mental or substance disorders as diseases, these programs anticipate that stigma and discrimination should decrease; that is, if mental disorders are attributed to factors outside of an individual’s personal control, blameworthiness should decrease, reducing society’s negative view toward such disorders (Read, 2007; Read et al., 2006). However, contrary to theoretical underpinnings, biogenetic models of mental disorders have not functioned to reduce stigma, even at times increasing the negative perception of those suffering from mental disorders (Read, 2007; Read et al., 2006). The ‘‘mental illness is an illness like any other” model for stigma reduction may increase stigma by strengthening essentialist assumptions (e.g., discreteness, informativeness, or biological basis) among those who already hold these beliefs and, in others, by germinating such beliefs in the first place. Conceptualizations which de-emphasize how informative, discrete, or biologically-based a disorder is may be less congenial with negative attitudes. For example, Riskind, Bombardier, and Ayers (2006) argued that a social-cognitive conceptualization of schizophrenia may be more empowering than a biological conceptualization, in part because symptoms are normalized within the former framework. By extension, others may view people with schizophrenia as less categorically or biologically distinct, and their symptoms less informative of other attributes, to the extent that
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their symptoms can be viewed as continuous with the experiences of everyone else. Read et al. (2006) argued that biological explanations may be associated with reduced perceptions of the autonomy of those with mental disorder, and also of their ability to evidence good judgment. These attributes of persons are centrally related to the psychological needs identified within self-determination theory of autonomy and competence, respectively (e.g., Deci & Ryan, 2000). A third important need according to self-determination theory is that of relatedness. It is possible that autonomy, competence, and relatedness capture the major areas of deficits perceived to characterize those with mental disorders. Moreover, it is possible that essentialist thinking is associated with low ratings of perceived autonomy, competence, and relatedness when judgments are made of those having a mental disorder. This may be a fruitful line of further investigation concerning essentialist thinking and stigmatization. Given the generalized nature of essentialist beliefs as operationalized herein (i.e., the essentialism measure did not itself directly concern mental disorder), essentialist beliefs should show systematic relationships with many other attributes. Essentialist beliefs may, for example, be associated with reduced levels of compassion or willingness to act altruistically toward others. Individual differences in essentialist beliefs may correlate with lower levels of openness, self-acceptance, and optimism. Essentialist beliefs may be associated with language preferences when referring to people with mental disorders (e.g., use of the term ‘‘schizophrenic”). 7.1. Limitations The samples employed in the current research (i.e., introductory psychology students) leave open the question as to whether the findings generalize to other student or general populations. Effect sizes of relationships between essentialist beliefs and stigmatizing attitudes were modest. Also, as the current studies were cross-sectional, the direction of the relationship cannot be determined; it is possible that essentialist beliefs are a consequence of stigmatizing attitudes, or that a third variable is responsible for the relationship between the two. This study relied on self-report measures of essentialism and attitudes. Further research could address this limitation by incorporating behavioural or implicit measures of stigma. It would also be informative to establish a relationship between essentialism and stigmatizing attitudes while controlling for other correlates of such attitudes, such as right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation (Bastian & Haslam, 2006). Additionally, exploring the relationship between essentialist beliefs and stigma from the perspective of those with mental disorders could have interesting implications for self-stigma and attempts to eradicate it. References Ahn, W., Flanagan, E. H., Marsh, J. K., & Sanislow, C. A. (2006). Beliefs about essences and the reality of mental disorders. Psychological Science, 17, 759–766. Bastian, B., & Haslam, N. (2006). Psychological essentialism and stereotype endorsement. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 42, 228–235. Bastian, B., & Haslam, N. (2007). Psychological essentialism and attention allocation: Preferences for stereotype-consistent versus stereotypeinconsistent information. Journal of Social Psychology, 147, 531–541. Cohen, J., & Struening, E. L. (1962). Opinions about mental illness in the personnel of two large mental health hospitals. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 64, 349–360. Corrigan, P. (2004). How stigma interferes with mental health care. American Psychologist, 59, 614–625. Corrigan, P., Markowitz, F. E., Watson, A., Rowan, D., & Kubiak, M. A. (2003). An attribution model of public discrimination towards persons with mental illness. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 44, 162–179. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The ‘‘what” and ‘‘why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227–268.
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