Abstract

People with serious illness or disability are often burdened with social stigma that promotes a cycle of poverty via unemployment, inadequate housing and threats to mental health. Stigma may be conceptualized in terms of self-stigma or public stigma. This article examines two psychological processes that underlie public stigma: associative processes and rule-based processes. Associative processes are quick and relatively automatic whereas rule-based processes take longer to manifest themselves and involve deliberate thinking. Associative and rule-based thinking require different assessment instruments, follow a different time course and lead to different effects. Of greatest importance is the fact that each process may require a different stigma-prevention strategy.