Illness Transmission Mode and Perceiver Personality: Factors Affecting Stigmatized Perceptions of Patients and Sexual Illness

Abstract

Past field research has demonstrated the devastating impact of illness stigma on patient populations; experimental studies have identified specific illness characteristics that influence stigmatization and social rejection of patients. The current study used a quasi-experimental design to investigate the influence of participant erotophobia-erotophilia (Fisher, Byrne, & White, 1983) and illness transmission (nonsexual, sexual) on perceptions of illness and patients. Sexual illness transmission led to significantly more negative perceptions of the illness and patient. A significant Erotophobia-Erotophilia x Nonsexual-Sexual Transmission interaction influenced participants' social rejection of the patient. Specifically, erotophobes socially rejected patients with the sexually transmitted illness more than patients with the nonsexual illness.

022 Predictors and Moderators of Sexual Distress in Women with Persistent Genital Arousal Disorder

“…Of those 53%, fear of stigma accounted for 26% of the reasoning for not seeking treatment. Smith and Nave (2007) indicated social rejection scores of erotophobes towards fictitious patients with sexually transmitted infections were higher in their study than those of fictitious patients with non-sexually transmitted illnesses.…”

“…These stigmas not only contribute to social rejection, but have also been shown to contribute to depression, anxiety, and stress among people suffering from sexually related illness (Smith & Nave, 2007;Fife & Wright, 2000;Barth, et al, 2002;Crandall & Moriarty, 1995) and sexual dysfunction.…”

The valence of sex: Automatic affective associations in erotophilia and erotophobia

“…In contrast, erotophobic individuals are more likely to stigmatize individuals with sexually transmitted infections (Smith & Nave, 2007), and they demonstrate lower levels of sexual knowledge and are less likely to seek out sex education (Fisher et al, 1988; Gerrard, Kurylo, & Reis, 1991). In addition, some have found that erotophobic individuals voluntarily look at sexual stimuli for shorter durations than erotophilic individuals (Becker & Byrne, 1985), suggesting that erotophobia and erotophilia translate into biases relevant to the processing of sexual stimuli, possibly even outside of an individual's conscious awareness.…”

Stigmatization of individuals with sexually transmitted infections: effects of illness and observer characteristics

“…Research comparing perceptions of individuals with illnesses that differ only on transmission mode (sexual or nonsexual) has shown that individuals with an STI are more likely to be rejected and viewed as immoral; that is, they are more likely to be stigmatized (Smith et al., ; Smith & Nave, ; Young et al., ). Although this tells us that sexual transmission of illnesses is stigmatizing, there is much less research on factors contributing to this stigmatization.…”