Constructive or cruel? Positive or patronizing? Reactions to expressions of positive and negative stereotypes of the mentally ill

Previous research has shown that people respond with greater sensitivity to negative stereotypical comments about a group that are made from someone outside the group in question than from someone who belongs to the group. In this paper, we investigated if the same effect occurs in response to comments made about stigmatized groups. Specifically, we examined how people react to comments made about the mentally ill. The conditions under which people accept or reject stereotypes of the mentally ill may shed light on the conditions necessary for effective anti-discrimination campaigns. In the current study, participants responded to positive or negative stereotypes of the mentally ill voiced by either someone who has, or has not, suffered from a mental illness. Participants were more sensitive, agreed less, and evaluated the speaker less favourably when comments came from the out-group rather than the in-group source. The effects were strongest for negative comments, however contrary to previous research participants also responded less favourably to positive comments from the out-group source. These reactions were mediated by the perceived constructiveness of the speaker's motives. Implications for the effectiveness of anti-discrimination campaigns are discussed.     

DO INFANTS SHOW GENERALIZED IMITATION OF GESTURES? II. THE EFFECTS OF SKILLS TRAINING AND MULTIPLE EXEMPLAR MATCHING TRAINING

The determinants of generalized imitation of manual gestures were investigated in 1‐ to 2‐year‐old infants. Eleven infants were first trained eight baseline matching relations; then, four novel gestures that the infants did not match in probe trials were selected as target behaviors. Next, in a generalized imitation test in which matching responses to baseline models were intermittently reinforced, but matching responses to target models were not eligible for reinforcement, the infants matched baseline models but not the majority of their target behaviors. To ensure their failure to match the target behaviors was not due to motor constraints, the infants were trained, in a multiple‐baseline procedure, to produce the target responses under stimulus control that did not include an antecedent model of the target behavior. There was no evidence of generalized imitation in subsequent tests. When the infants were next trained to match each target behavior to criterion (tested in extinction) in a multiple‐baseline‐across‐behaviors procedure, only 2 infants continued to match all their targets in subsequent tests; the remaining infants matched only some of them. Seven infants were next given mixed matching training with the target behaviors to criterion (tested in extinction); they subsequently matched these targets without reinforcement when interspersed with trials on which matching responses to baseline models were intermittently reinforced. In repeat tests, administered at 3‐week intervals, these 7 children (and 2 that did not take part in mixed matching training) continued to match most of their target behaviors. The results support a trained matching account, but provide no evidence of generalized imitation, in 1‐ to 2‐year‐old infants.