Information vs. inspiration: Evaluating the effectiveness of mental illness stigma-reduction messages.

Numerous countries, communities, and organizations have conducted campaigns aimed at reducing the stigma of mental illness. Using an online experiment, we evaluate the relative effectiveness of three types of campaign messages (information about the biological origins of an illness, information about the psycho-social origins of an illness, and inspirational information about the competence of those with an illness) for reducing the perceived stigma (how I think others feel) and personal stigma (how I personally feel) tied to two illnesses (depression and schizophrenia). Drawing on expectation states theories (EST), affect control theories (ACT), and past research, we expected all three messages to reduce both types of stigma, with their relative effectiveness following this order: competence > psycho-social > biology. We find that the messages are more effective at reducing personal stigma than perceived stigma and that the competence message reduces both types of stigma more effectively than the other messages. More specifically, we find that (1) none of the messages reduce the perceived stigma of depression, (2) only the competence message consistently reduces the perceived stigma of schizophrenia, (3) only the competence message reduces personal stigma toward individuals with depression, and (4) all three messages reduce personal stigma toward individuals with schizophrenia and do so equally well. The findings provide support for propositions in EST and ACT and suggest that stigma-reduction campaigns that focus on the competence and capabilities of individuals with a mental illness will be more effective than those that focus on information about the origins of mental illness.

Reward interventions: A strategy to Erode social inequality?

Decades of research illuminates how status beliefs about socially significant characteristics, like gender, fundamentally alter expectations about individual's competence and worth. This process biases opportunity structures and resource distributions, thereby recreating social inequalities in a self-fulfilling fashion. Many social and organizational policies attempt to reduce inequality by increasing disadvantaged groups' access to valued rewards, such as prestigious alma maters, awards, and valued positions. In addition to meaningfully increasing resources, the status these rewards convey should also theoretically increase the status of the particular people who come to possess them. To know whether inversions to reward structures reduce social inequality, however, we must first demonstrate that the status value of rewards alone is an effective intervention. In an experimental test of interventions to gender status inequality, reward markers with relatively higher or lower status value were consistently or inconsistently associated with the gender of the participants' task partners. Results indicate that rewards intervened in the groups' gendered status hierarchy as participants were more likely to be influenced by their partners' rewards than their gender.

Spread of status value: Rewards and the creation of status characteristics.

Rewards have social significance and are highly esteemed objects, but what does their ownership signify to others? Prior work has demonstrated it may be possible for these rewards to spread their status to those who possess them, such that individuals gain or lose status and influence by virtue of the rewards they display. Yet, is this spread enough to produce entirely new status characteristics by virtue of their association with rewards? I propose a theoretical extension of the spread of status value theory and offer an experimental test considering whether the status value conveyed by rewards spreads to a new, nominal characteristic of those who come to possess these objects. The results indicate that states of a nominal characteristic do gain or lose status value and behavioral influence through their association with differentially valued rewards. Thus, rewards can create new status characteristics with resulting behavioral expectations.

Gender, status, and psychiatric labels.

We examine a key modified labeling theory proposition-that a psychiatric label increases vulnerability to competence-based criticism and rejection-within task- and collectively oriented dyads comprised of same-sex individuals with equivalent education. Drawing on empirical work that approximates these conditions, we expect the proposition to hold only among men. We also expect education, operationalized with college class standing, to moderate the effects of gender by reducing men's and increasing women's criticism and rejection. But, we also expect the effect of education to weaken when men work with a psychiatric patient. As predicted, men reject suggestions from teammates with a psychiatric history more frequently than they reject suggestions from other teammates, while women's resistance to influence is unaffected by their teammate's psychiatric status. Men also rate psychiatric patient teammates as less powerful but no lower in status than other teammates, while women's teammate assessments are unaffected by their teammate's psychiatric status. Also as predicted, education reduces men's resistance to influence when their teammate has no psychiatric history. Education also increases men's ratings of their teammate's power, as predicted, but has no effect on women's resistance to influence or teammate ratings. We discuss the implications of these findings for the modified labeling theory of mental illness and status characteristics theory.

Targeted high and low speech frequency bands to right and left ears respectively improve task performance and perceived sociability in dyadic conversations.

Past research shows that the lower nonverbal frequencies of the human voice, beneath .5 kHz, transmit an acoustic signal promoting social convergence and status accommodation between human interlocutors. We conducted a laboratory experiment and a validation study to explore the possible communications benefits of targeting the low-frequency band to the left ears of human participants and the high-frequency band to the right ears. We compare this "Enhanced" condition with two other conditions: a "Confounded" condition, in which the low-frequency band was targeted to participants' right ears and the higher-frequency band to their left ears; and a Control condition, in which the entire unaltered frequency band was targeted to both ears. For the duration of their interaction, experiment participants engaged in dyadic conversations while attempting to complete a task via an audio-visual communication system. Our results show that both the speed and accuracy of task completion were significantly improved in the Enhanced condition. In the second validation study, groups of participants rated the quality of videotaped conversations from the experiment using a semantic differential instrument. The Enhanced condition conversations were rated significantly more affectively favourable than either the unaltered Control or Confounded condition conversations. Overall, our results exhibit potential for enhancing two-way electronic communications and improving task performances in media environments.