Young Sean D, Nussbaum A David, Monin Benoît
Department of Psychology, Stanford University, CA 94305, USA.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2007 Jun;33(6):789-99. doi: 10.1177/0146167207301027. Epub 2007 May 8.
Five experiments demonstrate how potential moral stigma leads people to underplay their susceptibility to sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and dampens their interest in getting tested. After adding unprotected sex to a list of otherwise innocuous possible vectors for a disease, the authors found that infected people were perceived to be less moral (Experiment 1a), and individuals believed that if they had the disease, others would see them as less moral too (Experiment 1b). Adding this stigmatized vector also reduced reported testing intentions (Experiment 2) and perceived risk of exposure (Experiment 3)--a disjunction fallacy because adding a potential cause reduced estimated likelihood, in violation of basic probability rules. Finally, the authors replicated the effect in a computer virus analog (Experiment 4) and showed that it did not result from simply knowing that one has not engaged in the stigmatized behavior. Results suggest that avoidance of potential stigma can have dramatic health consequences, both for an individual's health decision and for health policy.
五项实验表明了潜在的道德污名如何导致人们淡化自己对性传播疾病（STD）的易感性，并降低他们接受检测的意愿。在将无保护性行为添加到一种疾病的其他无害可能传播途径列表中后，作者发现感染者被认为道德水平较低（实验1a），并且人们认为如果自己感染了这种疾病，其他人也会认为他们道德水平较低（实验1b）。添加这种带有污名的传播途径还降低了报告的检测意愿（实验2）和感知的暴露风险（实验3）——这是一种析取谬误，因为添加一个潜在原因却降低了估计的可能性，这违反了基本概率规则。最后，作者在计算机病毒模拟实验中重现了这一效应（实验4），并表明这并非仅仅源于知道自己没有从事那种带有污名的行为。研究结果表明，避免潜在污名可能会对个人的健康决策和卫生政策产生重大的健康影响。
