Seminar 25 June 2026
Join Professor Bizumic for this month's SMP seminar.
Date & time
Date/time
25 Jun 2026 12:00pm - 25 Jun 2026 1:00pm
Event series
Event series
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Description
Professor Boris Bizumic
Title: The Relevance of the Dimensionality of Prejudice Towards People with Mental Illness for Stigma-Reduction Campaigns
Professor Bizumic will present a framework for understanding prejudice toward people with mental illness, highlighting its four key dimensions—fear/avoidance, unpredictability, authoritarianism, and malevolence. Drawing on cross-cultural research, the talk will discuss how these dimensions are rooted in personality and ideological factors, and how targeted interventions can shift specific components of prejudice to inform more effective stigma-reduction campaigns.
In person attendance is encouraged.
Zoom: https://anu.zoom.us/j/82644534028?pwd=qob0WiR0kmaCiarayPiPGazaq3AdeQ.1
Meeting ID: 826 4453 4028 | Password: 134364
Meeting ID: 826 4453 4028 | Password: 134364
Abstract:
Many researchers have argued that mental illness stigma is worse than the mental health condition itself, as it can lead to aggravated symptoms, poor treatment outcomes, and isolation. Nonetheless, despite the large amount of research, there has been little progress in understanding the conceptualization of mental illness stigma, including its major components (stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination). In this talk, I will be discussing our framework of prejudice towards people with mental illness, including our own work and that of other researchers within this framework. In line with theory and research, we argue that prejudice, being a negative group evaluation, is the core of stigma, driving discrimination. Research across many cultures and languages has convincingly supported our framework, showing that the Prejudice Towards People with Mental Illness scale has a stable and replicable four-factor structure. This structure includes four major dimensions:
1) fear/avoidance (fear of people with mental illness and the motivation for social distance from them),
2) unpredictability (a negative evaluation of people with mental illness as being highly unpredictable),
3) authoritarianism (an attitude in favour of using control, restricting life choices, and giving little or no freedom and independence to people with mental illness), and
4) malevolence (malicious attitudes related to people with mental illness, including beliefs that they are inferior to others).
Research has also shown that prejudice towards people with mental illness is deeply rooted in relatively stable personality dispositions, ideological worldviews, and cognitive-emotional processes, whereas demographic variables have little or no effect on prejudice. Although prejudice is a robust phenomenon, experimental and longitudinal research shows that its specific dimensions (especially fear/avoidance and unpredictability) can change through specific interventions. I will discuss these findings and illustrate what they mean for prejudice-reduction campaigns. The central conclusion of this work is that not only is stigma a complex construct, but so too is its core evaluative component, prejudice. Understanding the complexity of prejudice can further enable us to target its specific dimensions in a predictable way.
Location
Innovations Lecture Theatre, Anthony Low Building, 124 Eggleston Rd, Australian National University, Acton
-35.283444800194, 149.11561445
Upcoming events in this series
30 Jul 2026 | 12 - 1pm
Join Associate Professor Stephen Martin , Dr Chris Dickie,Dr Ashvini Munindradasa and Dr Daniel Mogg for this month's SMP seminar.