The proposed project examines the stigma and status consequences of psychiatric labels and the effectiveness of education campaigns designed to reduce those consequences. Past research suggests that psychiatric labels negatively affect individuals in two ways. First, the labels increase vulnerability to negative evaluation and social rejection (stigma outcomes). Second, the labels reduce others'confidence in the labeled individual's competence and reduce others' willingness to defer to the labeled individual during group decision making (status outcomes). The proposed project extends both lines of research with two experiments that address three questions: (1) How does a non-patient?s gender affect these processes? Studies from the 1970s suggest that women behave in a more tolerant way toward psychiatric patients than do men. However, few studies have examined this gender difference since the 1970s despite dramatic changes in the position of women; (2) How does a patient's diagnosis affect these processes? More specifically, do patients with a schizophrenic diagnosis suffer more extreme stigma or status outcomes than patients with a depression diagnosis; and (3) Can information regarding the psychiatric patients? competence reduce these stigma and status outcomes? In particular, are competence-based messages more effective at reducing negative outcomes than information-based messages focused on the causes of mental illness?
Experiment 1 is a laboratory experiment which addresses the first two questions. It will be among the first in decades to document the effect of psychiatric labels and gender on behavioral measures of stigma and status, and no recent behavioral experiment has examined the role of gender in these processes. Experiment 2 is a web-based experiment which addresses the third set of questions. Although previous studies have examined the effectiveness of education campaigns for reducing the stigma of mental illness, no experimental study has examined the relative effectiveness of different types of campaign messages. Together the proposed studies fill important gaps in the research on the consequences of psychiatric labels and on the avenues for ameliorating them. The findings will contribute to the expansion and development of modified labeling theory, status characteristics theory, and affect control theory and have practical implications for policy makers.
This research offers additional broader impacts. First, the findings from Experiment 2 will have direct implications for the creation of education campaigns that can effectively reduce the stigma and status consequences of psychiatric labels. Second, the project will promote the education of graduate students in the experimental research process. Graduate student research assistants from the Department of Sociology at the University of Oklahoma will have previously unavailable opportunities to conduct or collaborate on experimental research.Funding for this project will initiate a program of experimental research in this department. Finally, these studies will promote the integration of ideas across sub-areas within sociological social psychology. With few exceptions, researchers in the areas of status characteristics theory, affect control theory, and the modified labeling theory do research independently. This research will contribute to the cross-fertilization of their ideas.
