Waldron Lab

Strzelecki, A., & Waldron, J. S. (in press). Stigma toward alcohol use disorder: How biogenetic explanations and drinking contexts impact attributions and attitudes. Stigma and Health.

Sparks Waldron, J. (2021, May 26-27). The relationship between genetic attributions, genetic essentialist biases, and stigma of schizophrenia [Flash talk]. Association for Psychological Science Annual Conference, Virtual.

Hinkley, N., & Waldron, J. S. (2020). The effect of treatability information and genetic explanations on schizophrenia stigma. Psi Chi Journal of Psychological Research, 25(4), 368-377.

Attributing mental illness to genetic factors has been shown to reduce blame; however, doing so may create other negative attitudes. Genetic attributions can increase the desire to remain distant from someone with a mental illness (desire for social distance), reduce one's beliefs that an ill person can get better (prognostic pessimism), and cause people living with mental illness to be perceived as more dangerous. Presenting information about how mental illnesses can be treated alongside a genetic causal attribution may combat these negative side effects. Participants (N = 268) were recruited through Amazon's Mechanical Turk to read vignettes about a man ("John") with schizophrenia. Participants randomly received either a genetic or environmental attribution for John's illness, and then received treatability information or no information. A genetic explanation of schizophrenia led people to believe that the symptoms of schizophrenia described in the vignette were more permanent, p < .01, ηp² = .07; however, this finding was qualified by a significant interaction where the type of attribution had no impact on prognostic pessimism when presented with treatability information, p = .04, ηp² = .01. The present findings suggest the potential importance of emphasizing treatability information for disorders that are perceived to be genetically influenced.

Sparks Waldron, J., Boucher, K., Nadler, R., & Dyson, K. (2019, April). Impact of treatment-seeking and symptom course on depression stigma. Oral presentation at the 91st Annual Meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Chicago, IL, as part of symposium, “Stigma-related Beliefs Among Perceivers and Targets Living with Mental Illness.”