Attitudes and physical distance to an individual with schizophrenia: the moderating effect of self-transcendent values.

BACKGROUND: There is evidence that personal value priorities may influence prejudicial behaviors. In particular, it has been hypothesized that those who place a high priority on values such as equality, benevolence and social justice may be less likely to express any prejudicial personal attitudes in behavior. In the present study, we tested this hypothesis in the context of physical distance with reference to a person with schizophrenia. Self-transcendent value priorities and attitudes toward a young woman described as having schizophrenia were assessed in 95 university students. They were then led to anticipate meeting the person and the distance they sat from the expected location of the ill person was assessed. RESULTS: Women sat closer to the anticipated seat of the person with schizophrenia. In addition, there was a significant interaction between priority placed on self-transcendent values and attitude toward the person in predicting seating distance. There was a significant relationship between favorability of attitudes and sitting closer for those who were low in self-transcendent values, but attitudes did not predict physical proximity for those with high self-transcendent values. CONCLUSION: The impact of attitudes toward an individual with schizophrenia and subtle aspects of behavior such as physical proximity appear to be moderated by self-transcendent personal values. The role of implicit in comparison to explicit attitudes in explaining these results is worthy for further investigation.

The role of perceived norms in the stigmatization of mental illness.

BACKGROUND: Past research on stigmatization of the mentally ill has emphasized the importance of beliefs about mental illness in determining preferred social distance to those with such illnesses. In the current paper we examine the importance of perceived social norms in improving the prediction of social distance preferences. METHODS: Two hundred university students completed scales measuring their beliefs about either depression or schizophrenia; their perception of relevant social norms and their preferred level of social distance to someone with schizophrenia or depression. Measures of social desirability bias were also completed. RESULTS: The proportion of variance in preferred social distance was approximately doubled when perceived norms were added to beliefs about illness in a regression equation. Perceived norms were the most important predictor of social distance to an individual with either illness. A general preference for social distance towards a control, non-ill person was also an independent predictor of behavioral intentions toward someone with either schizophrenia or depression. CONCLUSIONS: Perceived social norms are an important contributor to an individual's social distance to those with mental illness. Messages designed to influence perceived social norms may help reduce stigmatization of the mentally ill.

Uncertainty orientation in the group context: categorization effects on persuasive message processing.

Persuasive messages often originate from in-group or out-group sources. Theoretically, in-group categories could facilitate heuristic-based message processing (because of the attractiveness of in-groups and their social reality cues) or systematic-based processing (because of high personal relevance of the message). The authors expected individual differences in uncertainty orientation and socially based expectancy congruence to be important variables in understanding these processes. Participants were exposed to strong or weak, in-group or out-group messages that were either expectancy congruent (in-group agreement, out-group disagreement) or expectancy incongruent (in-group disagreement, out-group agreement). As predicted, uncertainty-oriented participants increased systematic information processing under incongruent conditions relative to congruent (i.e., relatively certain) conditions; certainty-oriented individuals processed systematically only under congruent conditions. These findings suggest that uncertainty that has been created through social-categorization conflicts is treated differently by people of different personality styles.

Minority versus majority influence and uncertainty orientation: processing persuasive messages on the basis of situational expectancies.

The authors examined the effects of uncertainty orientation on processing persuasive messages from minority sources versus majority sources. The authors gave participants a proattitudinal or counterattitudinal message that either a numerical majority or a numerical minority endorsed and that contained strong or weak arguments. In support of the hypothesis that was related to message scrutiny, uncertainty-oriented individuals engaged in greater message scrutiny when the Source-Position (i.e., minority/majority-pro/con) pairing was imbalanced (in majority-con, minority-pro conditions) than when it was balanced (in majority-pro, minority-con conditions). Certainty-oriented participants showed the opposite pattern, scrutinizing the message more when the situation was balanced than when the situation was imbalanced. Support for the hypothesis that was related to nonsystematic processing was less clear because the majority appeared to have played a greater role in accounting for the aforementioned interaction than did the minority. Additional analyses supported this interpretation. However, in all cases, individual differences in uncertainty orientation moderated strength and direction of information processing.

Predicting behavioural intentions to those with mental illness: the role of attitude specificity and norms.

BACKGROUND: Social psychological research suggests that prediction of behavioural intentions towards those with mental illness could be increased by assessing attitudes towards specific actions or behaviours and by including a measure of perceived normative expectations by others concerning such behaviours. AIMS: To investigate whether attitudes towards specific behaviours and perceived normative expectations improve prediction of behavioural intentions towards a person with mental illness. METHODS: Two studies were carried out; one with university undergraduates and one with community service club members. Each included assessments of attitudes towards a person described as having a mental illness; attitudes towards specific behaviours reflecting social distance; perceived descriptive and injunctive norms with reference to those behaviours; and behavioural intentions. RESULTS: Attitude towards the specific behaviour frequently showed a higher correlation with behavioural intentions than did attitude towards the person. Inclusion of perceived norms also improved prediction of behavioural intention. CONCLUSIONS: The prediction of behavioural intentions towards those with mental illness may be improved by increasing the specificity of the attitude measures to the behavioural intentions being predicted and including measures of perceived norms. Furthermore, the effectiveness of efforts to reduce the stigma of mental illness may be increased by addressing their impact on perceived norms.

Physical proximity in anticipation of meeting someone with schizophrenia: the role of explicit evaluations, implicit evaluations and cortisol levels.

It has been suggested that the study of the stigma of mental illness should include more behavioral measures and further investigation of the possible importance of implicit evaluations in predicting responses to those with such illness. In the current paper, we report a study testing the relationship of implicit and explicit evaluations to physical proximity and cortisol levels in anticipation of meeting someone with schizophrenia. The results showed that both explicit evaluations and cortisol levels independently predicted physical proximity. Implicit evaluations were not related to either physical proximity or cortisol levels. The findings suggest that there are aspects of emotional response to those with mental illness that are not reflected in explicit measures of evaluation and that these, as well as explicit responses, can contribute to the prediction of behavior.