Attributed controllability of a person's substance addiction, perceived responsibility for the addiction, as well as familiarity with a substance and perceived dangerousness affect stigmatizing responses toward individuals. It is still unclear how media depictions of individuals with a substance addiction influence audiences' attitudes, and how characteristics of the portrayed persons interact with each other, and with audience characteristics such as recipients' moral values. In a 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 online-experiment participants (N = 400) read a news article about a person with a substance addiction. Articles were manipulated regarding the type of substance, responsibility for the addiction, sex, and employment status of the exemplar. Recipients' moral value orientation was measured as moderator. Results indicate that differences in stigmatization toward affected persons were largely influenced by exemplar's suggested type of substance addiction and respondents' moral value orientation. Interactions of the addictive substance with the exemplar's employment status and of respondents' moral value orientation with the ascribed cause emerged as well. Findings are discussed regarding media representations of stigmatized groups, the intersectionality of stigma-related characteristics, and stigma-sensitive health communication.

Self-disclosure of a health problem or a disability in online environments can be helpful to reduce stigmatisation and to empower marginalised individuals. Although stigmatisation leads to adverse health outcomes, it is still unclear which factors reduce readers’ stigmatising attitudes. This 2 × 2 × 3 × 2 online-experiment with 715 female participants examined how the depiction of self-disclosure of a mother’s disability, her coping with a stressful situation, and the child’s type of disability and sex in a fictional blog post affect female readers’ stigma-related attitudes. The role of readers’ perspective taking is also studied in this regard. A MANOVA yielded two main effects: Disclosure of the mother’s disability reduced social distance compared to the control condition (no disability). Female respondents with a high ability for perspective taking reported less stigmatising attitudes than female respondents scoring low in this regard. Both effects are also reflected in a four-way interaction with mother’s coping and child’s sex. Overall, results indicate a high potential of self-disclosures for anti-stigma communication. Implications for blogging about a disability and future health communication research are discussed.

The stigmatisation of people with mental illness has severe negative consequences for affected individuals. As research in the context of exemplification theory (Zillmann & Brosius, 2000) shows, single-case descriptions of affected individuals (i.e., exemplars) have the potential to either strengthen or reduce stigmatising attitudes towards people with mental illness, in general. We examine the role of depicting social support for exemplars with mental illness (i.e., depression), exemplars’ age and sex as well as characteristics of the potential stigmatisers (e.g., sex, relationship status) in generalised stigma-related attitudes towards people with mental illness. A 2 × 2 × 2 online survey experiment with 854 participants was conducted. Univariate ANOVAs yielded main effects and complex interaction patterns of participants’ sex and relationship status, as well as combinations of exemplar characteristics. Overall, our results confirm the influence that single-case descriptions can have upon generalised stigma-related attitudes towards people with mental illness. They underline the potential of depicting social support for exemplars with mental illness as well as the consideration of potential stigmatisers’ sex and relationship status for (de-)stigmatisation and give starting points for future research in the field of health and anti-stigma-communication.

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Institutional and individual stigmatization represent major barriers that prevent children with disabilities from accessing education. It can be presumed that children with disabilities are labeled as such even in inclusive educational settings and that teachers’ attitudes toward inclusive education and children with disabilities play a crucial role in this context. Against this background, the present study aims to (a) apply and conceptualize the mixed-blessings model in the context of stigma-related reactions to children’s disability labels in inclusive education and (b) shed light on the causal attributions of teachers that underlie stigma-related attitudes toward children with various disabilities. A 3 × 2 × 2 × 2 × 2 online experiment examined the ways in which disability-specific causes and symptoms, the type of disability in question, the children’s sex, and efficacy cues regarding educational efforts affect future teachers’ attitudes toward and expectations of inclusive education as well as their social distance toward children with disabilities. The participants in this experiment were N = 605 German student and trainee teachers representing different types of teaching professions. A multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) revealed that, in particular, the cause attributed to the disability, the depicted type of disability and the probability of learning success led to changes in attitudes. Respondents’ teaching self-efficacy and their status as students or trainees emerged as moderators of the effect of pupils’ type of disability. As a result, teacher education and training as well as communication regarding pupils with disabilities require a high degree of sensitivity to disability-specific and efficacy-related cues to prevent (accidental) professional or institutional stigmatization.