Effects of Language on Social Essentialist Beliefs and Stigma about Mental Illness

Abstract

Labeling social groups can increase social essentialism (e.g., beliefs that group members are fundamentally the same), leading to greater discrimination and stigmatization. Labels can also increase stigma about mental illness (MI). Some mental health professionals claim that using "person-first" language can reduce stigma, but there is little empirical support for this, and no studies have investigated the relation between person-first language and social essentialism. Here, 513 adults read vignettes describing characters with MI, using person-first (e.g., "a person with autism"), identity-first (e.g., "an autistic person"), or generic noun language (e.g., "an autistic"). We assessed participants' stigmatizing and essentialist beliefs about characters and their MI. Reported stigma and essentialism were correlated. Person-first language reduced stigmatizing beliefs about individuals with some disorders, e.g., depression, but not others, e.g., autism. Relative to generic nouns, person-first language reduced essentialist beliefs about real mental illnesses, but not novel ones.

A mixed method comparison of stigma toward autism and schizophrenia and effects of person-first versus identity-first language

“…In particular, non-autistic people show large variability in their understanding of the causes, age of onset, and need for lifelong treatment associated with an autism or schizophrenia diagnosis (33), but tend to believe that autistic people are more capable of living a "normal" life than those with schizophrenia. In line with greater functional assessments, non-autistic people also report less stigma toward autism (34), perceiving them as intelligent and creative, while people with schizophrenia were more likely to be perceived as dangerous (30). The increased severity of stigma toward people with schizophrenia extends to social attitudes; while non-autistic people report a reluctance to interact with both autistic people and people with schizophrenia (30), this stigma is more severe and wider ranging for hypothetical interactions with a person with schizophrenia, extending to familial, workplace, and educational settings (33).…”