Categorical versus dimensional thinking: improving anti-stigma campaigns by matching health message frames and implicit worldviews

Jan-Hinrich Meyer,Kathleen Cleeren,Debbie Isobel Keeling,Scott Motyka,Dhruv Grewal,Ko De Ruyter

doi:10.1007/s11747-019-00673-7

Abstract

Despite growing applications of social and healthcare marketing to enhance public well-being through anti-stigma campaigns, little research investigates how public stigma surrounding health conditions might limit the outcomes of these campaigns. By drawing on the theory of implicit worldviews, this study identifies reasons for public stigma as well as associated message frames to address these reasons. Study 1a provides evidence that implicit worldviews are relevant to campaign results. Study 1b and Study 2 demonstrate that fitting consumers’ implicit worldview with suitable (i.e., biomedical or biopsychosocial) health frames reduces stigma endorsement. Study 3 identifies the perceived severity of a mental illness as a boundary condition; marketing communications have the greatest impact when they refer to an illness with lower perceived severity. Finally, Study 4 expands understanding of the phenomenon by extending the findings to physical health conditions (i.e., obesity). The article concludes by discussing the implications of these findings for policy and future applications.

Highlights

Despite growing applications of social and healthcare marketing to enhance public well-being through anti-stigma campaigns, little research investigates how public stigma surrounding health conditions might limit the outcomes of these campaigns
With an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression that controls for familiarity with mental illness, we examined the effect of implicit worldviews on people’s public stigma
R2 = .13) that controls for familiarity with mental illness, we examined the effect of implicit worldviews on people’s mental illness stigma after they have been exposed to either a biomedical or a biopsychosocial message

Summary

Introduction

Despite growing applications of social and healthcare marketing to enhance public well-being through anti-stigma campaigns, little research investigates how public stigma surrounding health conditions might limit the outcomes of these campaigns. Targeting communication efforts at (potentially) affected individuals can have some effect, it may be insufficient to achieve desired changes at a societal level, because more general stigmatizing attitudes often impede the effects of individual-level campaigns (Puhl and Heuer 2010). This sort of public stigma refers to “prejudice and discrimination endorsed by the general population that affects a person” Public stigma surrounding health conditions remains a major impediment to both the effectiveness of interventions (by reducing individual treatment adoption) and realizing long-term societal benefits (by creating greater health disparities) (Booth 2017; Puhl and Heuer 2010; WHO 2017a), highlighting the imperative to diminish public stigma

Methods

Results

Conclusion