How negative are attitudes 1 Running Head: AIDS-LEUKEMIA PARADIGM How Negative Are Attitudes toward Persons with AIDS? Examining the AIDS-Leukemia Paradigm

How negative are attitudes 2 Reports a meta-analysis of studies published between 1987 and 1996 (combined Ns ≈ 2500) comparing attitudes towards persons with AIDS versus leukemia. The major goal was to identify which attitude measures are most sensitive to variation in the target person’s disease diagnosis and sexual orientation. Diagnosis had very large effects on responsibility attributions and target’s perceived dangerousness, and moderate effects on measures of willingness to interact with the target in situations of close contact. Effects on sympathy and hostility measures were much smaller. Target’s sexual orientation (controlling for diagnosis) had small effects on responsibility and some social distance measures. Discusses implications of effect magnitudes for symbolic rejection vs. fear models of the reaction to AIDS, conflicting interpretations by users of the AIDS-leukemia paradigm, and lessons for the study of illness cognition. How negative are attitudes 3 How Negative Are Attitudes toward Persons with AIDS? During the second half of the 1980s, news reports frequently appeared in the US about discrimination against HIV-infected individuals (Altman, 1986; Cook & Colby, 1992). Some legislators and editorialists advocated strict policies, such as quarantine of risk groups and mandatory HIV testing for certain occupations, to manage the threat to the public of HIV infection. Ryan White, an HIV-positive child with hemophilia who was expelled from his public school, became a symbol of the “innocent victims of AIDS ” (Schellenberg, Keil, & Bem, 1995). Citing stories such as these and data from opinion polls, Herek and Glunt (1988) characterized the public reaction in the US to AIDS as an “epidemic of stigma and fear ” (also Herek & Capitanio, 1993). One response of the health and social science communities was to conduct research documenting attitudes toward persons with AIDS (PWAs) 1 and predictors of those attitudes. The concepts of attitude and stigma are central to psychology’s intellectual tradition, so psychologists have been especially active in AIDS attitude research (see, for example, Pryor &amp