Victim-Blaming Tendency Toward People With AIDS Among College Students

Abstract

The victim-blaming tendency toward people with AIDS was examined in relation to gender, fraternity-sorority affiliation, classification (freshmen vs. others), religion (Catholic vs. others), and academic major (business college vs. others) in a survey of 818 students at a midwestern state university in the United States. Desired social distance from gay men and lesbians, the intervening variable in these relations, significantly mediated the indirect effect of fraternity-sorority affiliation, classification, and gender on the victim-blaming tendency. Gender and desired social distance were found to be significant direct determinants of the victim-blaming tendency toward people with AIDS. The study suggests that attitudes toward gay men and lesbians must change if attitudes toward people with AIDS are to change.

Inhibitions and Implications Associated With Celebrity Participation in Health-Related Social Marketing: An Exploratory Research Focused on HIV Prevention in Portugal

“…In Portugal, HIV is one of the central priorities of the National Health Plan, instituting programs of AIDS control in populations where the virus is most prevalent in the country. The social context around the first HIV diagnosis caused people who had the infection to experience stigma and discrimination (Dias et al, 2006;Herek, 1999;Johnny & Mitchell, 2006;Kalichman et al, 2009;Klein, Karchner, & O'Connell, 2002;Lee, Campbell and Mulford, 1999;Parker & Aggleton, 2003;Taylor, 2001;Valdiserri, 2002). HIV was associated with metaphors of plague, death, fear, guilt, and shame (Ponte, 2004) and AIDS was seen as a punishment for homosexuality or deviant behavior (Clarke, 2006).…”

AIDS-related stigma and attitudes towards AIDS-infected people among adolescents

“…Stigma has interfered with effective societal response to AIDS and has imposed hardships on people, either perceived to be or actually infected and living with HIV as well as the social groups and persons with whom they are associated (Herek, 1999;Lee et al, 1999;Schiff et al, 2003).…”

HIV, Stigma, and Attribution of Causal Emotions

“…I chose this operationalization in order to capture the avoidance tendencies and the power imbalances that are integral to Link and Phelan's (2001) conceptualization of stigma. In the trend analysis that compared public attitudes towards PLWHA in 1991, 1997, and 1999, Herek et al, (2002 reported that a significant minority of the population endorsed negative attributions towards PLWHA and the same proportion of respondents supported policies that were punitive towards PLWHA (Herek et al, 2002). These results indicate a relationship between negative emotional attributions and the stigmatization of PLWHA.…”

“…College students maintain a perception of low susceptibility to HIV/AIDS even in light of high risk behaviors, while attributing high susceptibility to people who match stereotypical depictions of an HIV/AIDS patient (Lin et al, 2017). Numerous studies document the experience of discrimination and status loss among PLWHA (Chong, Mak, Tam, Zhu, & Chung, 2017;Darlington & Hutson, 2017;Sayles, Ryan, Silver, Sarkisian, & Cunningham, 2007) as well as investigate discriminatory attitudes of the un-stigmatized population (Adrien, Beaulieu, Leaune, Perron & Dassa, 2013;Herek & Capitanio, 1993;Lee, Campbell, & Mulford, 1999). A power imbalance between PLWHA and people without HIV/AIDS exists as a result of the stereotypes that diminish the reputations of PLWHA and leave them discredited (Link & Phelan, 2001).…”