Sarah K. Harkness

Stigma Sentiments and Self-Meanings: Exploring the Modified Labeling Theory of Mental Illness

We introduce “stigma sentiments” as a way to operationalize the cultural conceptions of the mentally ill. Stigma sentiments are the evaluation, potency, and activity (EPA) associated with the cultural category “a mentally ill person.” We find consistent support for the validity of the evaluation and potency components as measures of these conceptions. We also demonstrate the validity of EPA ratings of self-identities (“myself as I really am”) and reflected appraisals (“myself as others see me”) as measures of self-meaning among psychiatric patients. Then we assess hypotheses derived from the modified labeling theory of mental illness: we expect each stigma sentiment to be related positively to the corresponding dimension of self-identities and reflected appraisals among psychiatric patients but unrelated to the corresponding dimension among non-patients. We find support for 13 of the 18 components to these hypotheses. We also find three cross-dimensional results that were not anticipated. The results suggest that the cultural conceptions of the mentally ill do affect the self-meanings of individuals diagnosed with a mental disorder, although the connection is sometimes more complex than a one-to-one relationship between a stigma sentiment and its corresponding dimension of self-meaning.

Examining Medical Interview Asymmetry Using the Expectation States Approach

In this study we examine medical interview asymmetry using the expectation states approach. Physicians lead clinical interviews because of a feature inherent in those interviews, namely the status difference between doctor and patient. This power differential varies: it is greatest when the biomedical aspects of the interview are emphasized. These observations are consistent with status characteristics theory (SCT), which is based on the expectation states approach to understanding the emergence of power-prestige orders in groups facing shared tasks. From an SCT perspective, when the required scope conditions are met the status characteristics of doctor and patient trigger expectation states that result in inequalities relevant to the biomedical tasks of the interview. We examine interactions between medical students and standardized patients from the perspective of SCT. We observe the emergence of vocal spectrum inequalities when the interview task is biomedical. Other nonverbal behavioral outcomes emerge as well, which are consistent with the asymmetry literature.

Discrimination in Lending Markets Status and the Intersections of Gender and Race

Research documents that lenders discriminate between loan applicants in traditional and peer-to-peer lending markets, yet we lack knowledge about the mechanisms driving lenders’ behavior. I offer one possible mechanism: When lenders assess borrowers, they are implicitly guided by cultural stereotypes about the borrowers’ status. This systematically steers lenders toward funding higher status groups even when applicants have the same financial histories. In an experimental test, I examine how applicants’ demographic characteristics combine to alter lenders’ status assessments and, thereby, lenders’ decisions in an artificial peer-to-peer lending market. Participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk evaluated a series of loan applicants whose gender (female or male) and race (black or white) were manipulated. The results demonstrate that applicants’ gender and race significantly affect lenders’ funding decisions because they alter lenders’ status beliefs about the applicants. This study provides experimental evidence that status is a likely mechanism driving lending discrimination.

Morality and Emotions

Sociologists have long considered morality to be a core aspect of social life, though direct interest in the topic has waxed and waned in the past century. Research in this area has been increasing over the past decade, however, especially as cognitive disciplines highlight the importance of emotions for understanding moral development, moral action, and the power of moral codes to circumscribe individual functioning. This chapter summarizes these parallel bodies of work as they can inform sociological understanding of emotions and their cultural milieu. We begin with a brief overview of the extant research on the role emotions play in cognitive processing and decision making. We then discuss the universality and cultural specificity of moral emotions before tracing arguments about the cultural moral systems that, often implicitly, shape individual moral feeling, and conclude with a call for more sociological research on the cultural facets of moral emotions.

Illness Labels and Social Distance

The authors examine a key proposition in the modified labeling theory—that a psychiatric label increases vulnerability to negative evaluation and social rejection—using an experimental design wherein female participants interact with a female teammate over a computer. The authors also evaluate a hypothesis derived from the disease-avoidance account of disgust by examining this same process for a nonpsychiatric illness: food poisoning. In addition, they introduce a composite measure of social distance behavior that is easy to implement in a laboratory experiment. The authors find, as predicted, that women seek greater social distance from teammates with a history of psychiatric or food poisoning hospitalization than they do from teammates with no hospitalization history. But, contrary to predictions, a teammate’s hospitalization history does not affect participants’ ratings of her likability. The results also do not vary significantly by psychiatric diagnosis (depression vs. schizophrenia), suggesting that the stigma of depression may be just as strong as the stigma of schizophrenia when information about symptoms is not available. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the modified labeling theory of mental illness and for the literature on disgust and stigma. They also outline avenues for future research.

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 mens and increasing womens 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 womens resistance to influence is unaffected by their teammates psychiatric status. Men also rate psychiatric patient teammates as less powerful but no lower in status than other teammates, while womens teammate assessments are unaffected by their teammates psychiatric status. Also as predicted, education reduces mens resistance to influence when their teammate has no psychiatric history. Education also increases mens ratings of their teammates power, as predicted, but has no effect on womens 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.

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.

Envy Up, Scorn Down: How Status Divides Us

ces that are in line with a crime-control model of the interrogation process: police behavior is interpreted as purposefully and knowingly strategizing and resorting to most any lawful kind of trickery and deceit based on their superior knowledge of the process and power to elicit information. Next, Feld examines how juveniles respond to these tactics in terms of how police obtain confessions, admissions, or denials. He explores how interrogation practices vary with geographical and socio-demographic context (primarily urban vs. rural; black vs. white) and produce justice ‘‘by geography.’’ Here, context emerges as important, with urban and minority status serving to indicate, for example, less knowledge of the criminal justice process and rights that can be asserted. Finally, recommendations to reform how police question suspects are offered. The need to adopt a strategy that will more equitably balance out the fundamental tension between rights and the need for information is highlighted. Feld, overall, breaks new ground in terms of his thoughtful interpretation of the tension inherent in the criminal justice system and its impact on juvenile interrogation, and in his empirical tour through the interrogation process. Nevertheless, the book is not without its shortcomings: already noted is that it has a compartmentalization in which the theoretically interesting set-up outlining the constitutional background and its application to juveniles is not meaningfully integrated into the empirical section. In addition, the focus on 17 and 18 years of age is a narrow slice of the juvenile population. Given the range of socio-emotional and intellectual development of individuals who are two, three, or even four years younger and who are increasingly facing interrogation, one wonders how generalizable findings from this sample are to the larger juvenile population. Finally, adults are not the subject of empirical analyses so they can serve as a reference or control group; in the absence of this undertaking, it remains difficult to determine how unique the interrogation experiences are when considering both the strategies law enforcement adopts and reactions to it by juveniles. Despite these caveats, however, Feld has produced an important book, one that scholars in criminology and the criminal justice system should read and absorb into their arsenal of knowledge.