精神障害者に対する偏見の研究 : 認知・感情・社会的距離に着目して

Prejudice against people with mental disorders is a persistent phenomenon. Inspired by Corrigan and Shapiro’s (2010) path model of cognition-emotion-behavior of stigma, we examined the effects of news stories on these three factors. A total of 125 university students responded to questions after reading one of three news articles excerpted from Corrigan et al. (2013): a story describing a patient recovering from a mental disorder, a story regarding the improvement of mental institutions, and a story about dental care (control condition). Structural equation modeling revealed that the recovery story (vs. the dental care story) increased positive perceptions of people with mental disorders (i.e., the sense that people with mental illness are as ordinary as those without it), leading to positive behavior (i.e., decreasing social distance). The mental institution story (vs. the dental care story) increased negative emotion and decreased positive emotion, but these emotions did not affect participants’ behavior. Although we did not find any significant paths from cognition to behavior through emotion, the current results suggested that perceived ordinariness may play an important role in the reduction of prejudice against people with mental illness.