Of Fear and Loathing: The Role of 'Disturbing Behavior,' Labels, and Causal Attributions in Shaping Public Attitudes toward People with Mental Illness

Abstract

Our paper couples previous research on attitudes toward people with illness and more general sociological research on attitudes toward out-groups to examine the role offive factors that influence the public s willingness to interact with people with health problems, including. the nature of the behavior described, causal attributions of the behavior s source, perceived dangerousness of the person, the label of mental illness, and the sociodemographic characteristics of respondents. Using vignette data from the 1996 General Social Survey (N = 1,444), we find that respondents discriminate among different types of health problems by expressing more desire to avoid those with drug and alcohol problems than with those with illness. Consistent with research on racial attitudes, we also find that Americans who attribute health problems to structural causes (e.g., stress or genetic/biological causes) are more willing to interact with the vignette person than those who see individual causes (e.g., bad character or the way the person was raised) as the root of the problem. However, even controlling for these factors, respondents who label the vignette a mental illness also express a preference for greater social distance. Finally, while the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondent appear to play a minimal role in preferencesfor social distance, the degree of dangerousness that the public ascribes to people with health problems is important and appears to mediate the influence of effects of labeling a person as mentally ill.