Effects of Biological Versus Psychosocial Explanations on Stigmatization of Children With ADHD

Abstract

Objective: Previous studies have found biological conceptualizations of psychopathology to be associated with stigmatizing attitudes and prognostic pessimism. This research investigated how biological and psychosocial explanations for a child's ADHD symptoms differ in affecting laypeople's stigmatizing attitudes and prognostic beliefs.

Method: Three experiments were conducted online with U.S. adults, using vignettes that described a child with ADHD and attributed his symptoms to either biological or psychosocial causes. Dependent measures gauged social distance and expectations about the child's prognosis.

Results: Across all three studies, the biological explanation yielded more doubt about treatability but less social distance-a result that diverges from previous research with other disorders. Differences in the amount of blame ascribed to the child mediated the social distance effect.

Conclusion: The effects of biological explanations on laypeople's views of ADHD seem to be a "double-edged sword," reducing social rejection but exacerbating perceptions of the disorder as relatively untreatable.

Keywords: ADHD; attitudes; biological explanations; causal attributions; stigma.