Bianca Manago | Indiana University (original) (raw)

Papers by Bianca Manago

Health Affairs, 2019

Highly publicized acts of violence routinely spark reactions that place blame on the perpetrator'... more Highly publicized acts of violence routinely spark reactions that place blame on the perpetrator's likely mental illness. Despite solid evidence that individuals with mental illness are unlikely to be dangerous, such prejudice can lead to support for inappropriately using legal means to force treatment. We examined trends in public perceptions of violence and support for coerced treatment across a 22-year period. The National Stigma Studies gave respondents one of three vignettes describing individuals meeting clinical criteria for mental disorders or another describing non-clinical "daily troubles". Respondents' endorsement of potential violence and support for coercion generally rose over time, significantly so for schizophrenia. By 2018, over 60 percent saw individuals meeting criteria for schizophrenia as dangerous to others, with 44-60 percent supporting coercive treatment. Over 68 percent saw individuals with alcohol dependence as dangerous to others with 25-37 percent supporting coercion. Lower but substantial percentages saw depression, and remarkably, non-clinical controls as dangerous. These findings reflect political discourse, not scientific data, and could lead to policies that would be ineffective and misdirect the search for the underlying roots of violence while unnecessarily increasing stigma towards those with mental illness.

Health Affairs

Highly publicized acts of violence routinely spark reactions that place blame on the perpetrator&... more Highly publicized acts of violence routinely spark reactions that place blame on the perpetrator's presumed mental illness. Despite solid evidence that people with mental illness are unlikely to be dangerous, such prejudice can lead to support for inappropriately using legal means to force people into treatment. We examined trends in public perceptions of violence and support for coerced treatment across a twenty-two-year period using data from three National Stigma Studies. The studies gave respondents one of three vignettes describing people who met clinical criteria for mental disorders or one describing a person with nonclinical "daily troubles." Perceptions regarding potential violence and support for coercion generally rose over time-significantly so for schizophrenia. By 2018 over 60 percent of respondents saw people who met criteria for schizophrenia as dangerous to others, and 44-59 percent supported coercive treatment. Sixty-eight percent saw people with alcohol dependence as dangerous to others, and 26-38 percent supported coercion. Lower but substantial percentages were reported for people with depression and, remarkably, for those with nonclinical "daily troubles," who were viewed as dangerous. These findings reflect political discourse, not scientific data, and could lead to policies that would be ineffective and misdirect the search for the underlying roots of violence while unnecessarily increasing stigma toward people with mental illness.

Annual Review of Sociology, 2015

Current Research in Social Psychology, Jul 26, 2011

ABSTRACT We describe the potential for handheld devices to change the way experimental social psy... more ABSTRACT We describe the potential for handheld devices to change the way experimental social psychology can be conducted. We argue that the new technology provides affordability and portability and creates new design possibilities.

This project is the first step in a long line of research that will examine the impact of status ... more This project is the first step in a long line of research that will examine the impact of status on information exchange in small groups of medical professionals. Specifically, we employ Expectation States Theory and observable power and prestige methodology to develop a coding scheme, and both a transcript and live coding methodology that is attuned to the unique status organizing processes in interprofessional medical teams. With the coding methodology we were able to achieve inter-coder reliability and intra-method (live vs. transcript) reliability. Finally, the methodology possessed criterion validity. Thus, it is a suitable methodology for analyzing a broad range of status characteristics, such as race and gender.

… in Social Psychology, 2011

We describe the potential for handheld devices to change the way experimental social psychology c... more We describe the potential for handheld devices to change the way experimental social psychology can be conducted. We argue that the new technology provides affordability and portability and creates new design possibilities.

Advances in Group Processes, 2013

Purpose: This chapter considers whether and how race/ethnicity can be examined using experimental... more Purpose: This chapter considers whether and how race/ethnicity can be examined using experimental methods. Methodology/Approach: We begin by discussing the highly contextual nature of race/ethnicity and reviewing the properties of experiments. After examining existing experimental literature that focuses on race/ethnicity, we turn to our current study that uses the incompatible complexity condition to examine the multi-level interactions of diverse racial/ethnic groups composed of Mexican American and white participants in Texas and black and white participants in Ohio. Research Implications: We argue that experiments, when guided by formal theoretical approaches that allow for general inquiries of theoretical principles, are especially suitable for studying interactional characteristics such as race/ethnicity.

Social science & medicine (1982), Jan 6, 2017

We examine socialization processes of stigmatized children through in-depth interviews with their... more We examine socialization processes of stigmatized children through in-depth interviews with their non-stigmatized parents. Specifically, we interviewed parents from “culture camps” (n=56) and “disability camps” (n=20). The former serves families of transracial adoption, and the latter serves families with children who have disabilities. This population offers a unique articulation of socialization processes that otherwise remain implicit. Moreover, by comparing these two unique groups, we are able to parcel out common stigma socialization practices. We argue first that stigma negotiation can be broken down into management (conciliatory techniques) and resistance (combative or corrective techniques). We then show how parents vacillate between management and resistance, teaching their children to draw on a range of tools as they navigate the tensions between self-preservation, mental well being, and social activism. Our findings can be applied to an array of bodied stigmas, opening the door for a rich line of continued empirical and theoretical research.

For parents of children with disabilities, stigmatization is part of everyday life. To resist the... more For parents of children with disabilities, stigmatization is part of everyday life. To resist the negative social and emotional consequences of stigma, parents both challenge and deflect social devaluations. Challenges work to upend the stigmatizing structure, while deflections maintain the interaction order. We examine how parents of children with disabilities deploy deflections and challenges, and how their stigma resistance strategies combine with available models of disability discourse. Disability discourse falls into two broad categories: medical and social. The medical model emphasizes diagnostic labels and treats impairment as an individual deficit, while the social model centralizes unaccommodating social structures. The social model's activist underpinnings make it a logical frame for parents to use as they challenge disability stigma. In turn, the medical model's focus on individual " improvement " seems to most closely align with stigma deflections. However, the relationship between stigma resistance strategies and models of disability is an empirical question not yet addressed in the literature. In this study, we examine 117 instances of stigmatization from 40 interviews with 43 parents, and document how parents respond. We find that challenges and deflections do not map cleanly onto the social or medical models. Rather, parents invoke medical and social meanings in ways that serve diverse ends, sometimes centralizing a medical label to challenge stigma, and sometimes recognizing disabling social structures, but deflecting stigma nonetheless.

Advances in Group Processes