Tröster H
Faculty of Psychology and Sports Science, University of Bielefeld, Germany.
Epilepsia. 1997 Nov;38(11):1227-37. doi: 10.1111/j.1528-1157.1997.tb01221.x.
When handling information about their disease in their social contacts, persons with epilepsy try to avoid or limit stigmatization. We report two basic strategies of information management: general concealment and preventive disclosure. To test whether persons with epilepsy apply a strategy of preventive disclosure, we hypothesized that they would disclose their epilepsy when anticipating that their disease would make them conspicuous in social contacts and when believing that they would be able to forestall stigmatizing attribution processes through disclosure.
One hundred nineteen outpatients at the Bethel Epilepsy Center, Bielefeld, Germany, aged 16-74 years responded to a questionnaire assessing willingness to disclose their epilepsy in various fictitious daily scenarios, the perceived risk that the interaction partner might find out about their epilepsy (risk of detection), as well as the anticipated positive and negative social consequences of disclosure in these social situations.
Willingness to disclose varied across the different scenarios, and only a few respondents rejected disclosure categorically. Willingness to disclose depended on the subjectively perceived risk of detection and the anticipated consequences of disclosure: Respondents were more willing to disclose their epilepsy the more they feared that their interaction partner would detect their disease or find out about it in another way and the more they anticipated that disclosure would enable them to exert a favorable impact on their partner's social judgment formation.
Many persons with epilepsy appear to apply a strategy of preventive disclosure with which they strive to influence social judgment formation in their environment by purposefully disclosing their disease to forestall possible stigmatization processes.
癫痫患者在与社会交往中处理自身疾病信息时,试图避免或减少污名化。我们报告了两种信息管理的基本策略:普遍隐瞒和预防性披露。为了测试癫痫患者是否采用预防性披露策略,我们假设,当他们预计自己的疾病会在社交中引人注意,且相信通过披露能够防止污名化归因过程时,他们会披露自己的癫痫病情。
德国比勒费尔德贝瑟尔癫痫中心的119名门诊患者,年龄在16 - 74岁之间,他们回答了一份问卷,该问卷评估了在各种虚构的日常场景中披露癫痫病情的意愿、对互动对象可能发现其癫痫病情的感知风险(被发现的风险),以及在这些社交情境中披露病情预期的正面和负面社会后果。
在不同场景下,披露意愿各不相同,只有少数受访者完全拒绝披露。披露意愿取决于主观感知的被发现风险和披露的预期后果:受访者越担心互动对象会发现其病情或以其他方式知晓,且越预期披露能对互动对象的社会判断形成产生有利影响,就越愿意披露自己的癫痫病情。
许多癫痫患者似乎采用了预防性披露策略,即通过有目的地披露自己的疾病来防止可能的污名化过程,从而努力影响周围人的社会判断形成。