Linking attitudes and behavior: a model for mental illness

Deinstitutionalization has led to community-based treatment of the mentally ill. While mental health experts cite advantages associated with community based therapy, negative attitudes have compromised many of the benefits, since rejecting attitudes serve to stigmatize the "mentally ill." Research has suggested that the stigmatizing effect of the label "mental illness" may occur through the self-fulfilling prophecy. This hypothesis, however, has not been tested. Using a modified selffulfilling prophecy paradigm, this project sought to clarify the mechanism by which negative attitudes toward the mentally ill may be created and maintained. Seventytwo college students participated in a modified version of the procedure employed by Snyder, Tanke and Berscheid (1977). Perceivers and targets conversed for five minutes via telephone. Due to ethical considerations, in the current project, all participants played the role of perceiver, and a confederate was used in the place of targets. Participants were informed that the study was examining how well exhospital patients adjust to post hospital life. Half of the perceivers were told that the target was recently released from a general medical hospital; the other half were told that the target had been in a psychiatric hospital. As hypothesized, the label given to confederates created differences in the way perceivers responded to the targets; those labeled mentally ill received more negative and rejecting appraisals than those not so labeled. The practical and theoretical implications of this research are discussed