(provided by candidate): Stigma is increasingly recognized as a severe problem faced by people with mental illnesses. It is imperative to develop interventions to reduce stigma, but interventions not well grounded in empirical research may produce disappointing results. My long-term career objectives are to deepen our understanding of the stigma process, with the goal of developing well-grounded interventions. In the period of this award, I will pursue three aims: 1) Investigate the role of """"""""incomprehensibility"""""""" in the stigma of mental illness, focusing on Star's (1957) argument that public fears of mental illness flow from the inability to comprehend what a person with mental illness thinks and feels. 2) Continue assessing, tracking and attempting to positively influence the impact of the biological and genetics revolution on the stigma of mental illness. 3) Translate powerful basic social science research on """"""""expectation states"""""""" to the stigma of mental illness to understand how negative expectations lead to discrimination and negative treatment through covert but powerful social interactional processes. I use a multi-method approach relying primarily on the powerful experimental method, combining telephone-administered vignette experiments that allow findings to be generalized to the national population and live experiments conducted in the laboratory that allow the measurement of actual as opposed to hypothetical behavior. I also make strategic use of semi-structured interviews and qualitative analytic methods. To achieve the goals outlined, I will expand my conceptual and methodological expertise by undertaking training in genetics, expectation states theory and laboratory experimental methods in social psychology. The work will take place at Columbia University, which provides an extremely supportive intellectual environment in the core areas of stigma, genetics and psychiatry. These resources will be supplemented with training visits to Stanford University and the University of Akron to consult and collaborate with leading experts in expectation states research.
