The Characteristics Of Meta-stereotypes Of Drug Addicts And Their Impact On Social Integration

The state supports and helps people who were forced to isolate drug return to the society,however,the current psychological returning of these people is not optimistic.Existing researches on drug addict’s social integration focused on the psychological difficulties and negative social status,which rarely explored the effect of "low evaluation" that drug addicts’ thought to drug addicts from the perspective of intergroup relations.Meta-stereotype has great influence on the intergroup contact and social adaptation;hence,the present study investigated the characteristics of drug addict’s meta-stereotype and the relationship between meta-stereotype and social integration by using interviews,questionnaire surveys and experiments.The overall research framework was as follows:Study 1,interviewed 12 drug addicts in Nanjing Dalianshan compulsory rehabilitation institute to investigate the drug addicts’ meta-stereotype of general people.Study 2,questionnaire surveys were conducted among 325 drug addicts to investigate the relationship between negative meta-stereotype and social integration and the moderating effect of self-esteem.Study 3,experiments were performed on 81 drug addicts to investigate the relationship between the manipulation of meta-stereotype and social integration and the moderating effect of group permeability.The results showed that drug addicts have multiple dimensional meta-stereotype and most of them are negative.Drug addicts who have taken drugs for more than fifteen years have a significantly higher level of negative meta-stereotype than drug addicts who have taken drugs for less than fifteen years.Negative meta-stereotype was negatively associated with social integration and the relationship moderated by the self-esteem.Drug addicts who have high self-esteem the identity inclusion would turn lower with the increasing of negative meta-stereotype.Nevertheless,the influence on identity inclusion of negative meta-stereotype was not significant when the drug addicts have low self-esteem.The relationship between manipulation of meta-stereotype and the social integration moderated by the group permeability.Drug addicts with high group permeability,the manipulation of meta-stereotype significantly predicted the preference of out-group;while for drug addicts with low group permeability,the effect of manipulation of meta-stereotype on the preference of out-group was not significant.The main conclusions were as follows:(1)The characteristics of drug addicts’ meta-stereotype were mainly negative.(2)There was a main effect of the length of drug abuse on meta-stereotype.(3)Moderating effect analysis showed that negative meta-stereotype was negatively associated with social integration and the relationship moderated by the self-esteem.(4)The manipulation of meta-stereotype through situational activation has no significant influence on drug addicts’ social integration.(5)The moderator role of group permeability was significant between the manipulation of meta-stereotype and the social integration.