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Contents of stereotypes toward mental illness

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Abstract

In previous research, people with different mental disorders are perceived with different stereotypes (Sadler et al., 2012). The present study examined how psychology students in Turkey perceive the common diseases in The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Undergraduate students (N = 290) rated 15 mental illness groups’ warmth and competence using the stereotype content model scales. The cluster analysis results revealed that the mental disorders fall into five clusters in terms of warmth and competence. People with obsessive-compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, social phobia, and depression were perceived warmer than competent. Similarly, participants rated people with an eating disorder and panic disorder as warmer than competent. Moreover, the analyses showed that mental illness groups differed in warmth and competence. Finally, this study researched which mental disorder groups were mixed stereotypes. Accordingly, five groups were perceived to be significantly more competent than warm, and eight were significantly more warm than competent.

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Fig. 1

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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  1. Department of Psychology, Erzurum Technical University, Erzurum, Turkey

    Burçak Sönmez

  2. Department of Psychology, Ankara University, Ankara, Turkey

    Kübra Meltem Karaoğlu

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  1. Burçak Sönmez
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Correspondence to Burçak Sönmez.

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Sönmez, B., Karaoğlu, K.M. Contents of stereotypes toward mental illness. Curr Psychol 42, 26545–26554 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-03693-9

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