Stigma and Interpersonal Relationships

Abstract

Stigma has been and continues to be a topic of interest to people from a wide variety of disciplines with many different perspectives. If there is one point upon which scholars from diverse backgrounds can agree, however, it is that there is no single common experience associated with the process of stigmatization. There is likely to be nearly as much variability among a group of people with a particular stigma, phenomenologically, as there is across groups of people with different types of stigmas. Some people acquire stigmas, for example, whereas for others a stigmatizing condition may be present from birth. For some people, a stigma can be permanently disruptive, whereas others seem to adjust quite quickly. In each case, the social psychological impact of the stigma is likely to be somewhat different.