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While many people with mental illnesses are stigmatised, those with schizophrenia are the most severely stigmatised group (Crisp, Gelder, Rix, Meltzer, &amp; Rowlands, 2000; Marie &amp; Miles, 2008; Pescosolido et al., 1999). A vast body of psychology research has been devoted to investigating how education – particularly education about the causes of schizophrenia – can reduce this stigma that is attached to schizophrenia. While there is great support for the notion that education in general can reduce stigma (e.g. Costin &amp; Kerr, 1962; Griffiths, Christensen, Jorm, Evans, &amp; Groves, 2004; Ritterfeld &amp; Jin, 2006), there is still disagreement regarding exactly which set of causal factors the general public should be educated about – biogenetic or psychosocial? Until now, only three previous studies (Lincoln, Arens, Berger, &amp; Rief, 2008; Schlier, Schmick, &amp; Lincoln, 2014; Walker &amp; Read, 2002) have experimentally compared teaching a purely biogenetic causal explanation to teaching a purely psychosocial causal explanation. The results of this research appear to be somewhat contradictory leading to the need for another, more robustly designed experiment. In the present research, two experiments were conducted in which participants’ level of stigma was measured after they were given a biogenetic causal explanation of schizophrenia, a psychosocial explanation, or given no causal explanation. It was predicted that participants given a causal explanation would show reduced levels of stigma compared to participants given no causal information, and that there would be a significant difference in the stigma reduction effectiveness between types of causal explanation. Contrary to these expectations, the results of Experiment One showed no reduction in stigma when participants were given a causal explanation compared to no causal explanation, and revealed no significant differences in stigma reduction efficacy between the biogenetic and psychosocial causal explanations. Experiment Two utilised the same basic paradigm as Experiment One but with the addition of more convincing causal explanations and a manipulation check. The results of Experiment Two gave evidence that both a biogenetic and psychosocial causal explanation successfully reduces discrimination compared to giving no information on the causes of schizophrenia. In addition, a purely biogenetic causal explanation was also found to successfully reduce belief in other stereotypes compared to a psychosocial causal explanation or no causal explanation. Thus, I conclude that stigma can be effectively reduced by providing education about the causes of schizophrenia, and that a biogenetic causal explanation is a more effective stigma reduction tool as it reduces multiple types of stigma. Strengths, limitations, implications and future directions are discussed.

Destigmatising Schizophrenia: An Investigation into the Effects of Different Causal Explanations upon Stigma