Education and Mental Health Stigma: The Effects of Attribution, Biased Assimilation, and Attitude Polarization

Educational interventions to reduce stigmatizing attitudes about mental illness have not been compared to evaluate their effectiveness. To systematically compare educational interventions college students (N = 232) were presented with high and low control explanations (psychosocial vs. biological) of high and low control disorders (addiction vs. schizophrenia), and the effects on the stigmatizing attitudes of blame and social distancing were measured. Perceptions of how persuasive the information was and its impact on attitudes were predicted by preexisting attitudes about mental illness. However, perceptions of the persuasiveness of the educational information were also consistent with attribution theory such that low control (i.e., biological causes and schizophrenia) was associated with less blame. These results illustrate the complexity of attitudes about mental illness and a potential difficulty in changing them.