Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 428–432
Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect
Personality and Individual Differences
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/paid
Belief in a just world and social dominance orientation: Evidence
for a mediational pathway predicting negative attitudes and discrimination
against individuals with mental illness
George Y. Bizer ⇑, Joshua Hart, Allison M. Jekogian
Union College, 807 Union Street, Schenectady, NY 12308, USA
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Received 1 September 2011
Received in revised form 26 October 2011
Accepted 1 November 2011
Available online 30 November 2011
Keywords:
Personality
Individual differences
Belief in a just world
Social dominance orientation
Mental illness
Attitudes
Behavioral intention
a b s t r a c t
Prejudice against individuals with mental illness stems from multiple factors, including the personality
traits of those harboring the prejudiced attitudes. However, little is known about the personality processes (as opposed to static correlates) leading to negative attitudes and discrimination toward individuals with mental illness. The present research tested a mediational model in which negative attitudes
against such people and resulting intentions to discriminate are distally rooted in just-world beliefs,
which predispose people toward higher social dominance orientation, a well-known proximal personality predictor of general prejudice. Participants completed measures of behavioral intentions, attitudes
toward individuals with mental illness, social dominance orientation, and belief in a just world. The proposed mediational model was supported, and an alternative causal model was not. These results illuminate the personality-process antecedents of attitudes toward individuals with mental illness and provide
a foundation for research targeting interventions intended to reduce prejudice and discrimination against
this population.
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
I was working in a solicitor’s as a trainee receptionist. I couldn’t tell
my boss I had to see a psychiatrist every week, so I told him I was
on a training scheme 1 day a week. When I had to tell him I was
being taken into hospital, his reaction said it all. He sat back in
his seat wanting to keep as far away from me as possible. As
soon as mental illness is mentioned, people literally back off from
you.
Jo, a person with a mental illness, as quoted by Thornicroft
(2006, p. 54).
Negative attitudes toward people with mental illness are common in contemporary society. For example, studies carried out in
cultures as diverse as Sri Lanka (Fernando, Deane, & McLeod,
2010), Jordan (Hamdan-Mansour & Wardam, 2009), the United
Kingdom (Crisp, Gelder, Rix, Meltzer, & Rowlands, 2000), and the
United States (Link, Phelan, Bresnahan, Stueve, & Pescosolido,
1999) have shown that large proportions of populations agree with
statements endorsing negative attitudes toward people with mental illness, including that such people are personally to blame for
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 518 388 6228; fax: +1 518 388 6177.
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (G.Y. Bizer), [email protected] (J. Hart),
[email protected] (A.M. Jekogian).
0191-8869/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.paid.2011.11.002
their illnesses, that they should just ‘‘pull themselves out’’ of their
problems, and ‘‘have no self-control.’’ Some of these studies
included health-care professionals in their samples, underscoring
the severity of the problem.
Importantly, such negative attitudes have important consequences on intentions to behave and actual behavior. For example,
in a 2006 survey, Pescosolido et al. (2010) found that more than
62% of respondents indicated an unwillingness to ‘‘work closely
on a job’’ with a person suffering from schizophrenia, while 47%
indicated such an unwillingness with regard to a person suffering
from major depressive disorder. Negative attitudes can also lead
to employment and housing discrimination (e.g., Weiss,
Ramakrishna, & Somma, 2006), and lead people with mental illnesses to avoid seeking much-needed treatment for their disorders
(e.g., Conner et al., 2010).
Perhaps due to the widespread existence of negative attitudes
toward individuals with mental disorders and the far-reaching
consequences of such attitudes, researchers have identified and
studied a variety of variables that predict such negative attitudes.
Some of this research has focused on social-structural variables,
including demographics: for example, less-educated people, older
people, males, and non-whites are more likely to hold negative
attitudes toward individuals with mental disorders (e.g., Corrigan
& Watson, 2007; Schwab, König, & Weiß, 1978). Other research
has focused on personality variables. For example, people high in
G.Y. Bizer et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 428–432
narcissism (Kemal, 2005) and neuroticism (Schwab et al., 1978) are
more likely to hold such negative attitudes.
1.1. The current research
We sought to extend research on the personality antecedents of
negative attitudes toward individuals with mental illness. Specifically, we explored the extent to which the belief in a just world
(BJW) and social dominance orientation (SDO) might work in tandem, consistent with a causal model predicting negative attitudes
toward individuals with mental illnesses as well as the selfreported likelihood that participants would engage in discriminatory behaviors against such individuals. Below, we describe these
two individual-difference variables and our hypotheses concerning
why and how they relate to negative attitudes and behavior toward individuals with mental illness.
1.1.1. Belief in a just world
Some people view the world as a just place, believing that good
things come to those who deserve them and bad things come to
those who do not (cf. Lerner, 1970; Lerner & Miller, 1978). As a
consequence of this belief, people who believe in a just world will
often blame victims for bad outcomes instead of attributing blame
to the actual perpetrator or simply to bad luck (cf. Furnham (2003)
for a review). For example, those high in BJW have been shown to
be, at least in some cases, more likely to blame poor people for
being poor (Cozzarelli, Wilkinson, & Tagler, 2001), to blame the victims of spousal abuse for the abuse (Kristiansen & Giulietti, 1990),
and to blame homosexuals for acquiring AIDS (Anderson, 1992).
It therefore seems likely that people high in BJW would be particularly prone to hold negative attitudes toward individuals with
mental illness. If high-BJW individuals tend to blame victims, it
would stand to reason that high-BJW individuals would blame
the mentally ill in some way for their disorders. Such blame could
thus manifest as negative attitudes toward these people. To our
knowledge, only one study has tested this hypothesis. Rüsch, Todd,
Bodenhausen, and Corrigan (2010) assessed BJW, along with the
extent to which respondents felt that individuals with a mental illness were responsible for their condition, were dangerous, and
exemplified stereotypes about mental illness. Results were ambiguous: whereas the correlation between BJW and perceived selfresponsibility approached (but did not reach) traditional levels of
statistical significance, the other correlations did not. Thus,
although ample theory supports an association between BJW and
negative attitudes, no evidence to our knowledge supports such
an association.
1.1.2. Social dominance orientation
SDO is another personality variable likely to predict negative
attitudes toward individuals with mental illness. According to social dominance theory (e.g., Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), SDO is an
individual-difference variable reflecting the motivation to endorse
and perpetuate hierarchical relationships between groups in society, in which one’s own group is dominant (or striving to be dominant). As such, high SDO should predict prejudice against a variety
of traditionally marginalized groups. Research has supported this
notion, demonstrating significant positive correlations between
SDO and, among other beliefs, sexism (Sibley, Wilson, & Duckitt,
2007) and various forms of racism (Duckitt, 2001; Van Hiel &
Mervielde, 2005).
Because individuals with mental illness might be thought of as
constituting an ‘‘ingroup’’ competing with other social groups for resources and social standing, one would expect individuals high in
SDO to hold more negative attitudes toward individuals with mental
illness. Although no research to our knowledge has focused on that
hypothesis, Phelan and Basow (2007) reported that individuals high
429
in SDO were more likely than those low in SDO to report the desire to
maintain ‘‘social distance’’ from characters in vignettes who were
described as having symptoms of mental illness. Thus, as with
BJW, although theory would support a correlation between SDO
and negative attitudes and behaviors toward individuals with mental illness, no such research involving attitudes and behaviors exists
to date.
1.2. A causal model?
In the current research, we initially assess whether BJW and
SDO correlate with negative attitudes against individuals with
mental illness. But, perhaps more importantly, we go beyond
exploring how BJW and SDO independently predict negative attitudes and discriminatory behaviors against individuals with mental illness: we instead test a causal model in which belief in a just
world impacts social dominance orientation, which in turn causes
negative attitudes, ultimately leading to self-reported intentions to
engage in discriminatory behaviors against people with mental
disorders. To support our argument for this double-mediated causal effect, we turn to two separate literatures.
First, to support the idea that belief in a just world might impact
social dominance orientation, which would subsequently impact
negative attitudes toward individuals with mental illness, we draw
upon Duckitt’s (2001) influential theory of ideology and prejudice.
This theory posits that prejudice stems in part from stable, dispositional ideologies that are in turn predicated on social beliefs (i.e.,
worldviews). Most relevant to the present study is the portion of
Duckitt’s theory pertaining to SDO, according to which SDO is an
ideological personality variable that causes individuals to harbor
prejudiced attitudes. Duckitt’s research demonstrates that the effect of SDO on prejudice is distally rooted in a worldview depicting
life as a ‘‘competitive jungle’’ in which individuals and groups must
struggle against one another in a ruthless battle for superiority.
Such a worldview causes individuals to become concerned with
their ingroups’ standing in the social order – hence, SDO – which
contributes to the development of prejudice, typically directed toward members of outgroups. In other words, prejudice can be
partly understood as an outcome of a personality process in which
individuals’ general worldviews influence their SDO.
Based on Duckitt’s theory, then, we reasoned that the link between BJW (a general social worldview) and negative attitudes toward individuals with mental disorders might be mediated by
SDO. Specifically, we predicted that BJW would be a causal antecedent to SDO because, like competitive-jungle beliefs, the belief
that the world is a place where people get what they deserve
should lead individuals to be more concerned with their own social
standing (i.e., to affirm their ‘‘goodness’’; cf. system justification,
Jost, Banaji, & Nosek, 2004), and therefore higher in SDO.
Whereas Duckitt’s research provides evidence for the first two
mediational paths in our proposed model, research on attitudes
and behavior provides evidence for the third. A wealth of evidence
has shown that, given appropriate conditions, attitudes are an
important cause of behavioral intention. Perhaps the most wellknown and well-supported theory in this context is Ajzen’s
(1991) Theory of Planned Behavior. This model proposes that the
most proximal cause of behavior is intention to behave (see also
Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975). And one of the three proximal causes of
such intentions is attitudes toward the behavior. Thus, consistent
with this line of research (for meta-analytic reviews, cf. Cooke &
Sheeran, 2004; Glasman & Albarracín, 2006), we proposed that
attitudes toward those with mental disorders would lead to selfreported intentions to behave in a discriminatory manner against
such people.
To test our model, we conducted two separate research projects. Our pilot research was conducted to identify a series of
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G.Y. Bizer et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 428–432
behavioral-intention items to be used as the discrimination
variable in the main study. Our main study, in turn, used these
behavioral-intention items to test our proposed causal chain.
for BJW (a = .74), SDO (a = .94), and negative attitudes (a = .90)
were calculated, with higher numbers indicating higher beliefs in
BJW and SDO, and more-negative attitudes toward individuals
with mental disorders.
2. Pilot research
3.3. Results
A total of 103 individuals from the United States participated in
one of two studies titled ‘‘A Brief Survey Dealing with Personality’’
via the Amazon Mechanical Turk website in exchange for US$0.10
(see Burmester, Kwang, and Gosling (2011) for a detailed description of participant recruitment and demographics, as well as evidence regarding the validity of research using this data-collection
service). Participants were asked to indicate on a 5-point scale
(1 = very likely and 5 = very unlikely) the likelihood that they would
engage in a variety of behaviors toward a person ‘‘with a psychological disorder.’’ We selected for use in the main study the four
items that yielded means closest to the midpoint (3.00) and distributions that most closely approximated a normal distribution.
3. Main study
3.1. Method
A total of 280 individuals from the United States participated in
‘‘A Brief Survey Dealing with Personality’’ via the Amazon Mechanical Turk website for US$0.70. The first section of the survey consisted of the four behavioral-intention items selected from the
pilot research. Participants were asked:
(1) Consider that your car’s brakes needed servicing. How likely
is it that you would allow a person with a psychological disorder to
repair the brakes on your car?
(2) Consider that you were speaking with a person with a psychological disorder. How likely is it that you would share personal
information about your life during the conversation?
(3) Consider that you learned that your child’s elementary
school teacher has a psychological disorder. How likely is it that
you would want to transfer your child into another class?
(4) Consider that your child was invited to a friend’s house to
play and you learned that the parent who would be supervising
the play-date has a psychological disorder. How likely is it that
you would allow your child to go play at that friend’s house?
To eliminate the midpoint as a response option, we provided
participants with a 6-point scale (1 = very likely and 6 = very unlikely) for each behavioral-intention item.
Following these questions, participants completed the Opinions
About Mental Illness Scale (Cohen & Struening, 1962), a well-used
measure of negative attitudes toward those with mental illnesses
(e.g., ‘‘There is something about mental patients that makes it easy
to tell them from normal people’’), the Just World Scale1 (Rubin &
Peplau, 1975; e.g., ‘‘By and large, people deserve what they get’’),
and the 16-item Social Dominance Orientation scale (Pratto,
Sidanius, Stallworth, & Malle, 1994; e.g., ‘‘Some groups of people
are simply not the equals of others’’).
3.2. Data reduction
To calculate participants’ behavioral-intention scores, the items
were coded such that higher scores indicated greater intention to
engage in discriminatory behaviors (Item 3 was reverse-coded);
composite scores were created ranging from a possible low of 4
to a possible high of 24 (Cronbach a = .73). Next, composite scores
1
Due to experimenter error, one of the 20 items, ‘‘Students almost always deserve
the grades they receive in school’’ was not included in the instrument.
3.3.1. Initial analyses
Means and standard deviations for the four behavioral-intention items are presented in Table 1. As shown in Table 2, both
BJW (r = .15, p = .01) and SDO (r = .48, p < .001) were significantly
correlated with attitudes, such that people higher in BJW and higher in SDO held more negative attitudes toward individuals with
mental illness.
3.3.2. Primary analysis
The data were submitted to the two-step mediational analysis,
shown in Fig. 1 (cf. Hayes, Preacher, & Myers, 2011; Preacher &
Hayes, 2004). This analysis provides estimates of path coefficients
and significance tests for specified mediational models, as well as
estimates of indirect effects. Results supported the hypothesized
causal model: BJW impacted SDO (t = 3.12, p = .002), SDO impacted
negative attitudes (t = 8.72, p < .001), and negative attitudes impacted intention to engage in discriminatory behaviors (t = 6.42,
p < .001). As indicated by the dashed lines in Fig. 1, none of the
three alternative causal links approached significance (all
ts < 1.26, ps > .21). Furthermore, the direct (nonmediated) effect
of BJW on discriminatory behaviors when controlling for the two
mediators was nonsignificant (t = .18, p = .86), providing further
evidence for mediation.
To corroborate this finding using a different analytic strategy,
we also conducted two separate mediational analyses, each following Baron and Kenny’s (1986) recommendations. The first analysis
tested the BJW–SDO-attitude path. BJW predicted negative attitudes, t(278) = 2.58, b = .15, p = .01, and SDO, t(278) = 3.12,
b = .18, p = .002. SDO predicted negative attitudes, t(277) = 8.72,
b = .47, p < .001; and critically, the effect of BJW on negative attitudes was eliminated when controlling for SDO, t(277) = 1.26,
b = .07, p = .21. The second analysis tested the SDO-attitude-behavioral intention path. SDO predicted behavioral intention,
t(278) = 2.72, b = .16, p = .007, and attitudes, t(278) = 9.10,
b = .48, p < .001. Attitudes predicted behavioral intention,
t(277) = 6.38, b = .40, p < .001; and critically, the effect of SDO
on behavioral intention was eliminated when controlling for attitudes, t(277) = .50, b = .03, p = .62.
3.3.3. Alternative analysis
To further test the hypothesized mediational chain, we submitted the data to an alternative analysis, in which SDO served as the
first (exogenous) variable, BJW and attitudes served, in order, as
the mediator variables, and behaviors served as the final
(endogenous) variable. Results indicated a direct effect of SDO on
behaviors, even when controlling for the mediators, t = 2.72,
p = .007, as well as no mediational effect of BJW on attitudes,
Table 1
Descriptive analyses for four behavioral-intention items.
1
2
3
4
Car’s brakes
Share information
Transfer child
Allow play-date
M
SD
3.30
3.74
4.22
3.54
1.14
1.05
1.15
1.13
Note. Scores ranged from a score of 1, indicating lowest perceived likelihood to
engage in discriminatory behavior to 6, indicating highest perceived likelihood to
engage in discriminatory behavior. Item 3 was reverse-coded for analysis.
G.Y. Bizer et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 428–432
Table 2
Correlation matrix.
BJW
BJW
SDO
Attitudes
Intention
–
–
–
–
SDO
⁄⁄
.18
–
–
–
Attitudes
⁄
.15
.48⁄⁄
–
–
Intention
.01
.16⁄⁄
.39⁄⁄
–
Note. ⁄p < .05, ⁄⁄p < .01. ‘‘Attitudes’’ was coded such that higher values indicated
more-negative attitudes against individuals with mental illness. ‘‘Intention’’ was
coded such that higher values indicated greater intent to discriminate against
individuals with mental illness.
Fig. 1. Path model.
t = 1.25, p = .21. These results suggest that our data were not consistent with the alternative mediational hypothesis.
4. Discussion
A wealth of research has demonstrated that negative attitudes
and behaviors against individuals with mental illness are widespread and impactful. Whereas a host of prior research has explored the extent to which various personality and demographic
variables individually predict such processes, we tested the extent
to which a double-mediational model could successfully explain
the relation between two important personality variables, negative
attitudes, and intent to engage in discriminatory behaviors. At one
level, the research is the first to demonstrate that BJW and SDO do
indeed predict negative attitudes against individuals with mental
illness. More importantly, however, our results are consistent with
the causal model in which BJW impacts SDO, which impacts negative attitudes, which in turn impacts intent to discriminate.
4.1. Implications
Research has established (or suggested) several personalitybased covariates of prejudice toward individuals with mental illness. The present findings add two variables to this research:
BJW and SDO. Additionally, although evidence from prior research
suggested that BJW and SDO might predict prejudice against individuals with mental illness (e.g., Phelan & Basow, 2007; Rüsch
et al., 2010), ours is apparently the first to explicitly test such a
link. The model we proposed and tested is an initial attempt toward creating an integrative, comprehensive process model of
the personality antecedents of negative attitudes toward and prejudice against individuals with mental illness. Identifying chains of
causality is not only important for theory-building and basic
understanding of the phenomenon in question, but is also a first
step toward reducing prejudice and discrimination by illuminating
possible targets for intervention strategies.
Indeed, a wealth of research has demonstrated that SDO levels
can be impacted by a variety of causes (e.g., Brown, 2011;
Guimond, Dambrun, Michinov, & Duarte, 2003; Morrison, Fast, &
Ybarra, 2009). In short, then, reducing SDO might be an effective
431
‘‘upstream’’ technique of reducing negative attitudes toward individuals with mental disorders.
Finally, we think it interesting in its own right that our findings
establish a relation between BJW and SDO, specifically suggesting
that the former causes the latter. This is consistent with Duckitt’s
(2001) dual-process theory of prejudice, and also suggests possible
elaborations on the theory; for example, BJW might be added to
competitive-jungle beliefs as a cognitive antecedent to SDO.
4.2. Limitations and directions for future research
Short of a true experimental design, it is not possible to make
definitive causal inferences (cf. Preacher & Hayes, 2004), and so
our model’s causal pathways should be interpreted cautiously.
However, we tested an alternative model that swapped BJW and
SDO, and this model did not fit the data. Moreover, SDO is typically
considered an antecedent to a variety of prejudices (Sidanius &
Pratto, 1999). On an a priori basis, it seems that domain-general
attitudes (e.g., SDO) would be more likely to influence domainspecific ones (e.g., attitudes toward a particular group) than vice
versa. Finally, a great deal of experimental research has demonstrated causal effects of attitudes on behavioral intention (cf. Petty,
Haugtvedt, & Smith, 1995). Taken together, we believe these points
provide compelling support for the causal paths our model
specifies.
In the present research, both attitudes and behavioral intention
were assessed toward the non-specific category of people with
mental illness. That is, neither the items on the Opinions About
Mental Illness Scale nor the behavioral-intention items gauged responses to individuals with any specific mental illness but rather
individuals with mental illnesses in general. Of course, mental illnesses exist on wide continua of severity, prognosis, and amenability to treatment, among other factors. An important direction for
future research would therefore be to assess the extent to which
the causal chain we found generalizes to different types of mental
illnesses. That is, would the same pattern of results hold for schizophrenia or dysthymia as it did for general mental illness in the current research?
An additional general direction for future research would be to
explore moderators of the mediational process for which we found
evidence. For example, it might be that younger people, for whom
ideology and stances on social issues are less crystallized (e.g.,
Sears, 1986), may fail to show the associations demonstrated in
the current research. It might also be that the causal model would
fail among populations from regions in which stigma against individuals with mental illness is extremely common. In addition, it is
possible that participants who are highly knowledgeable about
mental illness would demonstrate stably low levels of negativity,
independent of personality variables like BJW or SDO. Finally,
exploring the extent to which a person is likely to engage in socially desirable responding (either due to dispositional or situational factors) would be an interesting line of research.
4.3. Conclusion
Decades of research have documented the prevalence of negative attitudes toward and discrimination against people with mental illness. The present research suggests that such attitudes are
not simply correlates of socioeconomic, demographic, or personality factors, but instead at least in part the result of a cascade of effects in which individuals’ general beliefs about the world
influence their stable, motivated personality traits, which in turn
mold their attitudes and behavioral intentions. We hope this research, by suggesting the possible utility of understanding and perhaps changing ‘‘upstream’’ personality variables, will provide
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G.Y. Bizer et al. / Personality and Individual Differences 52 (2012) 428–432
potentially useful insight to scientists and practitioners whose goal
is to reduce the stigma associated with mental illness.
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