The Impact Of Perspective Taking On Explicit And Implicit Mental Illness Stigma

Mental illness stigma refers to negative evaluation, negative emotional experience and discrimination.of patients with mental illness. There are three theoretical orientations to explain the formation of the existence of mental illness stigma:, function theory, biological, cultural and social construction theory. The existence of Mental Illness Stigma is harmful to the process of psychological rehabilitation of patients with mental illness, it is a high-risk factor in the process of psychological rehabilitation. Traditional mental illness stigma intervention strategies including protest, contacts, and education, but did not achieve the desired results.Recent research indicates that perspective taking can reduce stigma effectively, but the underlying mechanism of action remains unclear. Comprehensive theoretical explanation, there are two assumptions:empathy-altruism assumptions and self-others merging assumptions. Researchers who were triggered by empathic perspective taking-Altruistic assumptions and self-others merging theory to explain the above effects. Holders of empathy-altruism hypothesis think that perspective taking can lead to empathy emotional, through the intermediary role of empathy can reduce the stereotype of the stigma groups; researchers who held self-others merging theory believe that perspective taking can lead to the fusion of self-others characterization those who have high self-evaluation will have a more positive evaluation towards the foreign groups after perspective taking.But exactly what kind of mechanisms were at work, supporters of the two theories have different ideas.The application of perspective taking to intervene on mental illness stigma are relatively small. Therefore, this study attempts to solve two problems. First,,can perspective taking effectively reduce the stigma of the mental disorders in explicit and implicit level? Second, What is the mechanism of the perspective-taking affecting the mental illness stigma, is the empathy-altruism role, or produce self-others characterized fusion?The first study investigate the effect and mechanism of perspective taking affects stigma of mental illness.88first determination of the emplict mental illness stigma and explicit self-esteem.After two weeks,the88students were recalled again and randomly divided into of perspective taking group and the control group, completed the experimental tasks, then again measure the explicit mental illness stigma,explicit self-esteem and empathy reactioa It is found that perspective-taking can effectively reduce the discriminatory acts of the subjects of psycho to gical disorders, the impact is not obvious in the two dimensions of the negative stereotypes, negative emotions. Further investigation of the mechanism of action available, empathic reaction from the perspective taking discriminatory acts of the impact of mental disorders on the part of the intermediary role of the inside out explicit self-esteem did not play the expected role in regulating.The second study explore perspective taking effect and mechanism of implicit stigma of mental illness. There are66students who first determination of its implicit stigma, implicit self-esteem and the qualities of empathy level, two weeks after the implicit stigma measurement score of positive subjects (48) recall the completion of formal experiments. Formal experiment were randomly divided into of perspective taking group and the control group, completed the experimental tasks, and then measured again its implicit stigma implicit self-esteem and empathy reaction. The results found that perspective-taking can effectively reduce the the inplicit stigma level test of mental disorders. Further investigation of the mechanism of action known implicit stigma of mental disorders reaction perspective taking, empathy can not afford the intermediary role of implicit self-esteem did not play a regulatory role in this process. But we can see the change measurements before and after the two sets of implicit self-esteem experimental treatment, perspective-taking group implicit self-esteem decreased, reaching the edge of a significant level, while the control group did not change significantly.In summary, we can have the following conclusions:1In explict level, the study found that after perspective taking in discriminatory behavior dimension of mental illness has been significantly weakened.Empathic reaction plays the part of the intermediary role in perspective taking discriminatory acts of the impact of mental illness and the explicit self-esteem level regulatory role in this process can not afford. The results partially supported the empathy-altruism hypothesis, there is no to verify self-others merging hypothesis.2, In implicit level, the study found that after perspective taking the test subjects’s implicit stigma of mental illness has been significantly reduced.Empathic response and implicit self-esteem in this process did not show the expected intermediary role and moderating role,the results did not support the empathy altruism hypothesis and self-others merging hypothesis.