Using Positive Empathy Interventions to Reduce Stigma Toward People Who Inject Drugs.

Alex J Clinton,Robin A Pollini

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.616729

Abstract

People who inject drugs are often the target of stigma that puts this already at-risk group at greater risk of harm. Past research has shown that holding stigmatizing views of people who inject drugs increases risky behaviors and is a barrier to their engagement in important medical and public health interventions. One explanation is that the negativity surrounding the group causes increased levels of anticipated emotional exhaustion, discouraging positive engagement. However, there has been minimal research focused on addressing this negativity to reduce levels of held stigma against people who inject drugs. We hypothesized that giving people an imagined positive contact exercise about people who inject would lead to a reduction in stigma, since exposure to positive empathy may create new mental associations between stigmatized groups and more positive emotions and experiences. Secondarily, we hypothesized that positive empathy strategies would be more effective than traditional informational or learning based techniques, and that the latter would be more effective than a control condition. Our sample consisted of 375 participants recruited online. Participants were assigned to one of three study conditions: a positive empathy condition, an informational learning condition, or a control condition, and completed a posttest social distance measure. Results demonstrated that subjects exposed to the positive empathy stigma reduction condition experienced a significant reduction in held stigma while participants exposed to traditional informational learning techniques showed no significant reduction in held stigma. Positive empathy-based stigma interventions should be further researched as a promising avenue to reduce the effects of drug-related stigma.

Highlights

Opioid use has increased substantially in the United States over the past decade, initially fueled by misuse of prescription opioids and more recently sustained by the use of heroin and fentanyl
Supporting our primary hypothesis, we found that a positive imagined contact E.I. significantly reduced post-test levels of held social distance when compared to participants that were not exposed to any stigma reduction intervention
These findings are consistent with the logic from past literature on perceived emotional exhaustion (Cameron et al, 2016) and the effectiveness of positive empathy-based perspective taking (Gonzalez et al, 2015) and contribute to a growing body of research looking at positive empathy as a distinct and effective construct to mitigate harmful effects of stigma

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Opioid use has increased substantially in the United States over the past decade, initially fueled by misuse of prescription opioids and more recently sustained by the use of heroin and fentanyl. The overwhelming negativity of stigmatizing thoughts about an outgroup like people who use drugs leads to a greater likelihood to actively dehumanize members of this outgroup to save cognitive resources This limits the effectiveness of empathy manipulations as the empathy manipulations do not change the levels of perceived emotional exhaustion for a target outgroup. We predict that by fostering positive empathy using an imagined positive perspective taking exercise, participants will report significantly lower levels of stigma against people who inject drugs due to new associations of this outgroup and “good.” we hypothesize that a positive E.I. will be more effective than a non-informational control condition at reducing stigma and, secondarily, that traditional methods for stigma reduction through learning and information-based interventions will be more effective than a non-informational control condition but less effective than the positive E.I

Participants

Study Design

Procedure

RESULTS

DISCUSSION

Limitations