Blundell R, Das R, Potts H, Scior K
University College London, Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology, London, United Kingdom.
University College London, Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, London, United Kingdom.
J Intellect Disabil Res. 2016 Mar;60(3):218-27. doi: 10.1111/jir.12241. Epub 2015 Dec 2.
Contact is seen as a key route to tackling stigma and discrimination. Contact theory states that the quality and type of contact, as well as circumstance of the contact experience, influence the effect of contact on prejudice. The majority of research in intellectual disabilities though has focused on contact as present or absent only.
A total of 1264 adult members of the UK general population completed measures of symptom recognition, social distance (as measure of external stigma) and causal beliefs in response to a diagnostically unlabelled vignette, depicting someone with intellectual disabilities.
A nuanced contact variable, including frequency of contact and closeness and nature of the contact relationship, explained more of the variance in social distance, compared to the binary variable (contact as present or absent). Only the closeness of the relationship was individually predictive though, and the models explained only relatively small amounts of the variance. Structural equation modelling of contact, recognition, social distance and causal beliefs demonstrated that the model including the nuanced variable was an adequate fit for the data.
Future research aimed at increasing our understanding of intellectual disability stigma should avoid assessing contact as a binary variable only, but consider other factors, particularly the closeness of contact relationships. Anti-stigma interventions may benefit from focussing on causal attributions as a method of reducing stigma.
接触被视为应对耻辱感和歧视的关键途径。接触理论指出，接触的质量和类型以及接触经历的情境会影响接触对偏见的效果。然而，大多数关于智力残疾的研究仅关注接触的有无。
共有1264名英国普通成年人完成了症状识别、社会距离（作为外部耻辱感的衡量指标）以及对一个未标明诊断结果的描述智力残疾者的 vignette 的因果信念的测量。
一个细致入微的接触变量，包括接触频率、接触关系的亲密程度和性质，与二元变量（接触的有无）相比，能解释更多社会距离方面的方差。不过，只有关系的亲密程度具有个体预测性，且这些模型仅解释了相对少量的方差。对接触、识别、社会距离和因果信念的结构方程建模表明，包含细致入微变量的模型与数据拟合良好。
未来旨在增进我们对智力残疾耻辱感理解的研究应避免仅将接触评估为二元变量，而应考虑其他因素，尤其是接触关系的亲密程度。反耻辱干预措施可能会受益于将因果归因作为减少耻辱感的一种方法。
