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The Peril of Opioid Stigma Peril: Experimental Evidence for Removing Danger-Based Health Appeals
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DOI：10.1037/sah0000638.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
News media messages about people with opioid use disorders (OUDs) can circulate stigma by discussing the peril, or harm, those individuals cause to others. A recent study suggests that stigma peril can harm public attitudes and behavioral intentions toward people with OUDs (Ledford et al., 2022), but little is known about the direct outcomes of stigma peril or the mediating pathways through which opioid stigma peril influences stigma outcomes. Centered on the model of stigma communication (Smith, 2007; Smith et al., 2019), this study utilized a 2 (stigma peril: high, low) x 3 (opioid type: prescription opioid, heroin, fentanyl) between-subjects, online factorial experiment to investigate the effects of stigma peril on social distance, behavioral regulation, opioid-related policy support, and stigma message sharing through two primary mediation pathways: stigma beliefs and negative emotions. The study also examined the moderating role of personal experience with OUDs. Results among 364 U.S., English-speaking Amazon Mechanical Turk workers found evidence that opioid stigma peril directly harmed opioid-related policy support and indirectly predicted all four study outcomes through either stigma beliefs, negative emotions, or both mediators. Follow-up conditional indirect effects analysis revealed that anger and frustration served a mediating role only for people who had a close friend or family member with an OUD. Results of this study advance theoretical understandings of the stigma message effects process and suggest that health journalists, practitioners, and policymakers should avoid peril-based messaging. Additional theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Keywords:
opioid
stigma
model of stigma communication
peril
identity
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