The Onset and Offset of Stigma: How Perceptions of Controllability and Effort Predict Helping Intentions toward Depressed Individuals

Abstract

A large body of research has taken an attributional approach to understanding stigma and its motivational underpinnings, by investigating how emotional and behavioral responses to stigmatized individuals are influenced by causal attributions of their condition. The present study, adapted from Karasawa (1991), aims to evaluate how causal judgments of depression, including perceptions of controllability and effort, relate to emotional response and willingness to help depressed individuals in need. These causal properties are measured in a temporal frame that differentiates the cause of the onset of depression from the cause of its persistence over time, or offset. Results replicated evidence for an attribution-affect-action sequence of motivation, by which helping intentions are hindered by anger that arises from perceived controllability for both the onset and the offset of depression. Surprisingly, however, evidence was not found for a relationship between effort perception and helping intention, contradictory to what social moral judgments would predict. This unique finding is discussed in terms of the goals of punishment within an attributional framework, suggesting that helping a stigmatized individual may communicate a lack of ability to prevent failure and a futility of future efforts. Thus, withholding help from a stigmatized individual who fails in spite of effort may represent a utilitarian form of punishment, aimed at promoting continued effort in spite of previous failure.