Collaborative Research: A Multi-Method Approach to Stigma and Status Processes

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Status and stigma are fundamental factors that influence the ways that individuals organize themselves in social groups. Status is a social process whereby persons in groups locate themselves and others in hierarchies of influence and prestige. Stigma is a process whereby members of social groups identify certain attributes as discrediting, subjecting those who possess them to social rejection and exclusion. Research on status processes in groups has identified a number of attributes that act as status markers, including gender, race, age, and education. Research on stigma processes has also identified a number of attributes that are stigmatizing, including mental illness and physical disability. The research literatures on stigma and status have both proliferated in recent decades, but they have operated more or less independently. Mental illness and physical disability, for example, are absent from research on status processes in groups. Research on stigma, in turn, does not typically attend to status-related outcomes such as influence and performance evaluations. The investigators will carry out three studies that address areas of convergence and departure between status and stigma processes in groups.The first study is an experiment to be completed at the University of Maryland to investigate responses to an attribute identified in prior research as a status marker (educational attainment), attributes identified as stigmatizing (various categories of mental illness), and an attribute identified in research as both a marker of status and stigma (race) in order to determine ways in which reactions to the attributes overlap and diverge. The second project, to be completed at Columbia University, is a study of implicit attitudes toward persons with mental illness. Unlike self-report measures of attitudes that require the attention and control of individuals, the expression of implicit attitudes is spontaneous and unintentional. The major advantage of implicit measures is that they have the capacity to overcome social desirability biases that are common in other types of attitude measures. The third project is an audit study to test for status- and stigma-related outcomes of mental illness in employment decisions. The study involves sending job applications to employment listings, varying whether the applications specify a history of mental illness.By employing multiple methodological approaches as well as variables and measures that represent both traditions, the three studies have the potential to significantly push forward the independent research literatures on both status and stigma processes in groups. The studies also have the capacity to inform intervention programs designed to reduce the stigma of mental illness. Although there have been several recent calls for interventions to reduce the stigma of mental illness, most of these interventions have not included a research component. Because the interventions with the highest likelihood of success will be grounded in basic research, and because poorly grounded interventions may result in wasted resources and pessimism about our ability to reduce stigma, the proposed studies represent an important complement to more applied approaches to eradicate the stigma of mental illness.