Over the past several decades, attempts have been made both to measure and to change attitudes toward the mentally ill. Early studies which measured such attitudes found that the general public considered the mentally ill to be morally degenerate, dirty, and dangerous. As time went on, public attitudes evolved into looking at mental illness in terms of a medical model, viewing mental illness as an illness like any other. This is the point at which the general public is now. It seems to be the opinion of some of the reviewers that such an evolution of views would bring about more accepting behaviors. Previous behaviorally-oriented research has not shown this to be the case. It is conceivable that as public attitudes evolve to a more interpersonally-oriented view, behavioral acceptance would also increase.
Shortcomings in previous research included the lack of a face-to-face interaction between normals and the mentally ill, and attention to such details of the interaction as physical proximity. The present study investigated whether such conditions as being able to see someone one interacts with, and how far away that person is, make any difference in the way rewards and penalties are meted out, particularly if one of the participants is seen as mentally ill by the other. It was expected that when face-to-face and close to one another, a normal teacher would over-reward someone thought to be mentally ill. This response, hypothesized to arise out of a normal person's apprehension regarding the mentally ill, was expected to lessen as distance increased. It was also expected that when out-of-sight, learners would be penalized more heavily than learners face-to-face. This would particularly be the case when the learners was perceived as mentally ill.
The experimental task involved a college student volunteer acting as a teacher to a confederate who was presented as either normal or mentally ill. Other variables were physical proximity and the ability of the participants to see one another. The teacher was required to administer a paired-associate learning task to the learner. Control, within limits, of the amount of reward or penalty in tokens, meted out for responses was entirely the teacher's. After the task, the teacher was required to complete an evaluation questionnaire on the learner.
Results were surprising. The expected over-reward of the mentally ill learner when close and face-to-face did not materialize. In fact, it was found that learners face-to-face and far away were rewarded a greater amount and penalized less than those close. It seems that an attempt was made by these face-to-face, far away teachers to bring about an intimacy equilibrium, compensating for what seemed to be an uncomfortably great interpersonal distance. This was the case regardless of the perceived mental status of the learner, evidencing no differential treatment of the learner if he was presented as mentally ill. Out-of-sight predictions, however, were borne out. Implications of the data were mentioned. Possibilities of the direction in attitudes toward the mentally ill were explored, with two successful attitude change programs detailed. / Ph. D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/38611 |
| Date | 12 June 2010 |
| Creators | Santangelo, Michael Joseph |
| Contributors | Psychology |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation, Text |
| Format | v, 98 pages, 3 unnumbered leaves, BTD, application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
| Relation | OCLC# 08140027, LD5655.V856_1981.S254.pdf |
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