Zhu Jiajia, Yan Lihua, Mu Yan
CAS Key Laboratory of Behavioral Science, Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Department of Psychology, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Front Psychol. 2022 Apr 26;13:848993. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.848993. eCollection 2022.
Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the public stigma associated with COVID-19 has emerged. To better understand the COVID-19 stigma, the present research conducted three studies on 1,493 Chinese participants from the outbreak to the recovery period of the COVID-19 pandemic to examine the psychological mechanisms of COVID-19 stigma by comparing it with other disease-related stigmas in terms of their explicit and implicit processes. Study 1 and Study 2 jointly demonstrated that the public endorsed more stigma toward the COVID-19 related people (i.e., the COVID-19 patients) relative to the other disease-related people (i.e., the SARS patients, people with flu) in multiple explicit aspects, including emotional, motivational, cognitive, and social processing. Using the implicit association test (IAT), Study 3 found no significant difference in the implicit measures of the COVID-19 vs. the SARS groups, which further revealed that the pandemic stigmas (i.e., COVID-19 and SARS) were similar at the implicit level. These findings suggest common (implicit level) but distinct (explicit level) psychological processes of the pandemic-related stigmas, which provide reference to policymakers in formulating suitable interventions to deal with COVID-19 stigma and a newly generated potential stigma and provide psychological support for the public in the future.
自新冠疫情爆发以来，与新冠病毒相关的公众污名化现象便已出现。为了更好地理解新冠污名，本研究针对1493名中国参与者，在新冠疫情从爆发到恢复期开展了三项研究，通过将新冠污名与其他疾病相关污名在显性和隐性过程方面进行比较，来探究新冠污名的心理机制。研究1和研究2共同表明，在包括情感、动机、认知和社会处理等多个显性方面，公众对新冠相关人群（即新冠患者）的污名化程度高于其他疾病相关人群（即非典患者、流感患者）。研究3使用内隐联想测验（IAT）发现，新冠组与非典组在内隐测量上没有显著差异，这进一步表明，在隐性层面上，疫情污名（即新冠和非典）是相似的。这些发现揭示了与疫情相关污名的共同（隐性层面）但不同（显性层面）的心理过程，这为政策制定者制定合适的干预措施以应对新冠污名和新产生的潜在污名提供了参考，并为未来的公众提供心理支持。
