The power of the label and the role of tightness in mental illness stigma.

• Main Author: Tan, Jayne Sarah En Min.
• Other Authors: Wan Ching
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: DRNTU::Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/49157
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The role of the mental illness label in eliciting negative attitudes towards mental illness is central to this research. To expand the current understanding of mental illness stigma, the cultural dimension of tightness-looseness was explored and implicated in stigmatizing the mentally ill. In order to compare the effects of the mental illness label to a physical disability label, participants were either led to believe that another student had history of depression or that the student previously suffered from a broken leg. The study predicted that performance on a memory task would improve after encountering the mental illness label but not the physical illness label. Furthermore, perceived tightness was expected to strengthen the relationship between the mental illness label and improvement in performance. Both hypotheses were not supported. The effect of the mental illness label also was hypothesized to elicit negative attitudes towards the mentally ill, and tightness was predicted to strengthen the relationship between the mental illness label and negative attitudes towards mental illness. The findings provided support for the prediction that attitudes towards the mentally ill would be more negative after encountering the mental illness label, but did not support the prediction that tightness would strengthen the relationship. Overall, tightness was not found to influence the relationships between the mental illness label and attitudes or performance.