Talk:Social stigma

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 3 September 2019 and 9 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Alex Horley. Peer reviewers: Chiqueno, PaigeCarmichael1, MrrrAndersonnn, Regoc14, Adam conlon, Tcharwood73, Osa225.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 09:40, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Moved a Sentence To The Top
I moved the sentence (below) to the opening paragraph. It was buried farther down in the article but is clearly essential to the core definition of what 'stigma' actually is:

"Stigma is often based on ignorance, irrational or unfounded fears, mass hysteria, lack of education, or a lack of information pertaining to a particular person or group."

Sean7phil (talk) 23:53, 23 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Although this is a popular cliché, it's mostly disproved by empirical research, so I replaced it with something based on science. Tijfo098 (talk) 10:28, 12 October 2010 (UTC)

Addition
I added 'sane' and 'mentalliy ill' under the differentiation section.Social stigma being such a major factor associated with visible or known mental illnesses.

24.8.106.182 (talk) 23:10, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Positive stigma?
I might just be being ignorant but I'm pretty sure 'positive stigma' is an oxymoron a contradiction in terms. Plus the following sentence ends in nonsense. 82.71.1.116 19:35, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

it seems pretty lame to me to qualify " a jew in nazi germany, a african american before 1960, an arab post 9-11/"...aren't these stigmas still active? - signed by an anon IP


 * Not the same way as it was under these periods of time. It's a social stigma to be a woman in some social situations, even more to be a homosexual in a religious-oriented environment and even for myself a white American on certain issues to admit they have Native American ancestors, there's a small level of self-shame, discomfort and mourning in that retrospective. In the U.S. back in the 1970's and '80s, there was a wave of ethnic pride of an "Americanized" people to safely say they are "Irish, Italian, German, Polish, Greek, etc." without being seen as ethnics or foreigners, the trend of multiculturalism for a "color blind" society to tolerate African-American, as well Asian and Hispanic ethnic identity that once was stigmatized...and the watch word "tolerance" in the 1990's allowed more social groups to "come out" and discuss experiences as a formerly stigmatized group of people. + 71.102.2.206 (talk) 04:01, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

What is the meaning for the word outcast? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.151.76 (talk) 18:20, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree
I feel this article is poorly written, and by someone who has a very shallow understanding of stigma. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.239.230.76 (talk) 05:15, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

highly agread —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.126.186.190 (talk) 00:27, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

What is the meaning of the word outcast?
Link title —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.134.151.76 (talk) 18:21, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Merge proposal
I think this article should be merged into the article Stigma (Sociological Theory). --Antonielly 19:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Let's discuss this at Talk:Stigma (sociological theory). delldot   talk  09:51, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Origin of the Term
I'm interested and some others probably are as to the origin of the term stigmatization. Obviously -ation can be taken off, giving you the verb to stigmatize. The earliest recorded use of stigma is in the greek ... oh god... I think it's a diagraph? Or a ligature? Whatever. So where is the connection? -Panther (talk) 16:04, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia exclusive
The article appears to be more of an opinion based editorial exclusive to Wikipedia rather than an encyclopedic treatment of a subject. There are a lot of broad sweeping ascertions expressed with little or no facts or evidence to substantiate. Several vague comments (e.g. lack of education?) add to the implausibility of this entry. Perhaps more references to credible scientific studies, with detailed analysis and explanation. What, specifically, does "lack of education" imply? mrcdem

Theory-ladden
This article appears theory-ladden with a lot of detailed exposés of various theories of how stigma might occur being given upfront. Are these widely accepted in sociology? Most of them seem rather untestable to me, and the wiki article doesn't attempt to discuss that aspect. Tijfo098 (talk) 15:39, 11 October 2010 (UTC)


 * Agree. Zezen (talk) 07:53, 14 December 2018 (UTC)

Some points
Just some points to add/consider:


 * Individuals who are forced, and errouneous, jailed in psychiatric hospitals, and who do not have consolidated diagnosis, resulting on mistaken stigmatization, rejection in social groups and in some exceptional cases, violence and death.
 * Individuals who are caught/discovered by having a paraphilia. This subject is similar to someone who are caught to be gay (and who don't want this to become public). Note that paraphilia is also present in hetero/"straight" people and this is worth mention.
 * The impact of those situations resulting social isolation, suicide or even stimulated crime as a defensive act, or homicide commited by stigmatizer.

The subject is vast. I just reported cases that I know (empirical observation) that resulted in social isolation and deaths in Brazil. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.79.146.156 (talk) 13:24, 12 April 2012 (UTC)

PSYCH 2410A
these are the changes i have made to this article:

- the first change I plan to make to the social stigma page is to change the layout of the page, as of now it is very confusing and not orderly. I plan to have the introduction start with the definition then the etymology then the 3 forms of social stigma followed by a little talk on Goffman who first named the 3 forms and then a summary of some research done on social stigma. After this I plan to make the following headings of what social stigma is, main theories and contributions, followed by current research. - the next change I plan to make is to eliminate some categories and form them in to bigger categories to make the paper flow better. For example, etymology can go in the introduction of what social stigma is as the section is only about 2 sentences. Also, there is about 3 sections talking about people who have contributed to the study of social stigma so I plan to form those in to one big section. - the last thing I will do to this page is add some information on social stigma in the media by talking about gender stereotypes and a study done on them. This will go under the research portion of the page. The study I chose is called looking through gendered lenses: female stereotypes in advertisement. It is a study about 150 high-school students who are divided in to 2 groups, one that views stereotypical images and one that does not. The results showed that brief exposure to gender stereotypes played a role in reinforcing them. This study was done by S.Lafky, M.Duffy, M.Steinmaus, and D, Berkowitz in 1996. Mnettle (talk) 18:45, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Opinions of authors
Are these people considered respectable in psychology community? So and so said xxx and have published A,B,C, D and E books and here are the ISBN and links... clearly looks like an attempt to increase publicity and promote their books.

Cantaloupe2 (talk) 03:01, 18 April 2013 (UTC)

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Suggestions
Hello,

I think that something that should be noted in this article is that being stigmatized can potentially lead to suicide. Because depending on the age of the person being "discriminated" against for their beliefs, looks or etc., they lose their identity, and if they're repeatedly being told that they aren't "normal" or a "good person" that can lead to self-doubt, which in severe cases can lead to suicide if that person feels they have no other way of dealing with who/what they are, and who/what other people say they are. Hltozier (talk) 16:59, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I also agree with the addition of stigma leading to suicide. It is an important idea to bring up and is certainly an issue in today's world. This would be good to put under the section titled "Main Theories and Contributions" under the subsection "The stigmatized."Paigealexis6 (talk) 19:40, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

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Goffman quote?
The section about Goffman includes a line that resembles a direct quote: "The phenomenon whereby an individual with an attribute which is deeply discredited by his/her society is rejected as a result of the attribute. Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity."

I was not able to find this quote in the cited source. Could someone please clarify? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.181.136.192 (talk) 19:58, 3 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Seconding this - the quote does not appear to be genuine. --Editor510 drop us a line, mate  10:00, 13 May 2018 (UTC)

This problem seems to have been resolved with detailed correct Goffman quotes now included in the article. --ReproHealthProf (talk) 21:19, 31 July 2019 (UTC)

MH, Disability and Stigma
I've patched a fairly grievious mis-statement in the "People with mental disorders" section, which claimed there was no stigma towards physically disabled people when it is actually a well known and widespread cause of disablist discrimination and hate crime, but the whole area of disability as a cause of stigma needs addressing, both historically and contemporarily. Historically disability stigma has run from exposing disabled infants on hillsides in the Hellenic period, to the enthusiam towards locking disabled people, whether physically or mentally disabled, away in asylums during the Victorian era, and indeed continuing through into the mid-late 20th Century until challenged by the Disability Rights Movement. But in particular disability stigma has led to the forced sterilization of disabled people seen in the Eugenics movement, ultimately culminating in the mass-murder of Aktion T4 and the Holocaust (and eugenics based sterilizations still occasionally occur today -- c.f the 'Pillow Angel' case and the discussion in https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/19/sterilisation-children-australia-disability). Then there is contemporary stigma towards disabled people, as evidenced by things like the UK's Disability Employment Gap, which sees disabled people employed at half the rate of non-disabled, and the disabled community wide debate on whether you are wise to declare a disability in a job application, due to the risk of it being promptly binned, even when that is explicitly illegal. Plus widespread stigmatised beliefs about disabled people enshrined in newspaper headlines like "70% are faking".

I'm relatively confident that the "People with mental disorders" section needs a major rewrite to better reflect current thinking on Mental Health and Mental Illness, however that's not an area I'm competent to address. But ultimately the coverage needs to be wider than that, and to address stigma towards disability as a whole, with stigma over MH as a particularly bad problem area within that. 82.11.66.40 (talk) 19:49, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps add more examples, sanitation worker would be one of them
I'm doing some work on the sanitation worker article. For sanitation workers social stigma is a huge issue, especially in e.g. India but also all over the world. I am wondering if this could be added also as an example and wikilinked from here. I am not yet quite sure where in the article it would fit. Any suggestions? EMsmile (talk) 16:40, 28 January 2022 (UTC)

So I added physical disability
Physical disabilities get stigma sometimes too 68.59.19.78 (talk) 03:08, 24 November 2022 (UTC)