Stigmatizing Attitudes And Malleability Of College Students Toward Methamphetamine Addicts

In recent years,the number of methamphetamine addicts has quickly increased,which threatened the public health.Studies have shown that the stigmatized attitudes perceived by meth addicts from healthy people are barriers to seeking treatment and rehabilitation,and that active rehabilitation support from the public plays an important role in eliminating or slowing down the addictive behaviors of drug addicts.However,the public population has a low intention of rehabilitation support for meth addicts,but the influencing factors and the underlying mechanism between these factors and the intention of rehabilitation support remain to be explored.Stigmatizing attitudes affect the public’s intention to support rehabilitation.However,most of the current research on stigmatization attitudes among substance addicts has focused on explicit stigmatiaztion,and most of the research on implicit stigmatization among substance addicts has focused on health care practitioners.In addition,sympathy is a kind of important human emotion,it can directly affect the individual factors such as human behavior.The just world belief may moderate the effects of stigmatized attitudes on rehabilitation support intention.These research aimed to explore how the implicit and explicit stigmatized attitudes impact the intention of rehabilitation support for meth addicts and the underlying mechanisms of the relation between stigmatized attitudes and intention of rehabilitation support in healthy populations.The intervention strategies targeted in the stigmatized attitudes were also explored.In the first study,810 college students were investigated using the Perceived Public Stimatization Scale,the Sympathy Measurement,the Belief in a Just World Questionnaire and the Rehabilitation Support Intention Questionnaire to explore the relationship between explicit stigmatization attitude toward methamphetamine addicts and the intention of rehabilitation support for methamphetamine addicts,and the mediating role of sympathy and the moderating role of just world beliefs.The results showed that:(1)Stigmatization attitude significantly negatively predicted rehabilitation support intention;(2)Sympathy played a partially mediating role in the relationship between stigmatization attitude and rehabilitation support intention;(3)Just world belief moderated the relationship between stigmatization attitude and rehabilitation support intention.In the second study,we used the Single Category Implicit Association Test,the Compassion Questionnaire,the Just World Believing Questionnaire and the Rehabilitation Support Intention Questionnaire to investigate the relationship between implicit stigmatization attitude toward methamphetamine addicts and the intention of rehabilitation support for methamphetamine addicts,as well as the mediating role of sympathy and the moderating role of just world beliefs.The results showed that:(1)implicit stigmatization attitude significantly negatively predicted rehabilitation support intention;(2)Empathy completely mediates the relationship betweenimplicit stigmatization attitude and rehabilitation support intention;(3)The moderating effect ofthe just-world belief on the implicit stigmatizationattitudeandtheintention ofrehabilitationsupport wasnotsignificant.Study 3 used anti-stigma priming to intervene the stigmatization attitude of the participants.Results: The level of stigma in the anti-stigma priming group was significantly lower than that in the control group.In this study,we found that implicit and explicit stigmatization attitudes of healthy people towards meth addicts could not only directly influence the intention of rehabilitation support,but also indirectly affect the intention of rehabilitation support through compassion.High just world belief can enhance the influence of explicit but not implicit stigmatization attitude on rehabilitation support intention.Processing the information of positive behaviors of meth addicts can significantly reduce the negative evaluation of meth addicts in healthy people.