Premium
Natural kind and entitative beliefs in relation to prejudice toward mental disorders
Author(s) -
Haqanee Zohrah,
Lou Evelina,
Lalonde Richard N.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/jasp.12249
Subject(s) - prejudice (legal term) , psychology , stigma (botany) , social psychology , dominance (genetics) , mental health , schizophrenia (object oriented programming) , clinical psychology , psychiatry , biochemistry , chemistry , gene
Mental health campaigns often promote biogenetic beliefs to reduce stigma, but their effectiveness may vary across disorders. Our study ( N = 127) examined two components of essentialist beliefs—entitative (i.e., characterizing groupness) and natural kinds (i.e., biogenetic)—about two stigmatized mental disorders (schizophrenia, alcoholism) as well as a somatic disorder ( P arkinson's disease), and their relation to prejudice. The three disorders significantly differed in natural kind beliefs ( P arkinson's highest, then schizophrenia, and alcoholism lowest) and prejudice (alcoholism highest, then schizophrenia, and P arkinson's lowest), but not entitative beliefs. Entitative beliefs, however, was a stronger predictor of prejudice against schizophrenia than natural kind beliefs even after controlling for social dominance orientation and prior contact. Implications for anti‐stigma efforts and strategies are discussed.