The impact of parenting and personality on mental illness stigma
- WCU Author/Contributor (non-WCU co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
- James Fox (Creator)
- Institution
- Western Carolina University (WCU )
- Web Site: http://library.wcu.edu/
- Advisor
- David Solomon
Abstract: Public stigma towards people with mental illness is often comprised of incorrect beliefs and stereotypes about dangerousness and social and interpersonal deficits. Past research has examined the impact that one’s personality and upbringing have on the willingness to endorse stigmatizing beliefs. While results have been mixed, low prosocial personality traits (Yuan et al., 2018) and high parental control/overprotectiveness (Zhao et al., 2015) have been shown to predict higher levels of mental illness stigma. Currently, no study has examined potential interaction effects between these factors; it is possible that higher levels of prosocial personality traits may lessen the impact controlling parenting has on mental illness stigma through the facilitation of contact experiences with stigmatized individuals, which commonly contributes to reduced endorsement of stigma (Yuan et al., 2018). It was predicted that controlling parenting would be positively associated with the endorsement of beliefs that mentally ill individuals are dangerous and possess poor social skills, and that this association would be lessened by high prosocial personality traits such as Agreeableness, Extraversion, and Openness. An overall sample of 268 participants between the ages of 18 and 24 were recruited from two separate online platforms and reported on measures of recalled parental overprotectiveness, personality traits, and stigmatizing beliefs. The present findings indicate that none of the interaction effects between parenting and personality were significant. Correlational analyses indicate that high Agreeableness and Openness predict lower perceived dangerousness and low social skills, while Extraversion shows a negative association with perceived poor social skills. Parental overprotectiveness displayed no significant correlations with any stigma measures, while regression models indicated that high parental overcontrol contributes to perceived poor social and interpersonal skills for mentally ill individuals. Exploratory analyses found a significant two-way interaction between gender and Extraversion in determining perceived dangerousness. Implications of these findings are discussed.
The impact of parenting and personality on mental illness stigma
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Created on 4/1/2024
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Additional Information
- Publication
- Thesis
- Language: English
- Date: 2024
- Subjects
- Stigma (Social psychology)
- Mental illness
- Parenting
- Personality