Abstract:
The following study examined whether people’s reactions to an individual differed based on the individual’s sexuality and mental illness status. Participants read a vignette about a man who is either heterosexual or non-heterosexual and either does or does not have a mental illness, and completed measures which assessed their level of stigma toward the vignette subject. I hypothesized that there would be an interaction effect between mental illness and sexual orientation on reported stigma. However, the results indicated that the interaction was non-significant. I found that only sexuality had a main effect on warmth and social distance. Given this, there appears to be a discrepancy between the amount of stigma that is reported by those who are sexual minorities and have mental illnesses and how people report feeling about them, potentially indicating that people are only viewing one identity as salient at a time rather than considering both at once.
