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Why So Serious? An Attempt to Mitigate the Short-Term Harmful Effects of the Film Joker on Prejudice toward People with Mental Illness

The media perpetuates many harmful stereotypes about people with mental illness. In two studies, we demonstrate the impact of negative media portrayals of mental illness on prejudice and attempt to mitigate these negative effects. Specifically, in Study 1, participants watched the movie Joker, a rec...

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Autores principales: Poulgrain, John William, Bremner, Niquaila May, Zimmerman, Hannah, Jao, Chia-Wei, Winter, Taylor, Riordan, Benjamin Charles, Bizumic, Boris, Hunter, John, Scarf, Damian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9598699/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36285953
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs12100384
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author Poulgrain, John William
Bremner, Niquaila May
Zimmerman, Hannah
Jao, Chia-Wei
Winter, Taylor
Riordan, Benjamin Charles
Bizumic, Boris
Hunter, John
Scarf, Damian
author_facet Poulgrain, John William
Bremner, Niquaila May
Zimmerman, Hannah
Jao, Chia-Wei
Winter, Taylor
Riordan, Benjamin Charles
Bizumic, Boris
Hunter, John
Scarf, Damian
author_sort Poulgrain, John William
collection PubMed
description The media perpetuates many harmful stereotypes about people with mental illness. In two studies, we demonstrate the impact of negative media portrayals of mental illness on prejudice and attempt to mitigate these negative effects. Specifically, in Study 1, participants watched the movie Joker, a recent film which associates mental illness with violent behavior, or a control film (Terminator). Participants completed the Prejudice towards People with Mental Illness (PPMI) scale before and after viewing their respective films. The PPMI consists of four dimensions: fear/avoidance (i.e., wanting to avoid people with mental illness), malevolence (i.e., viewing people with mental illness as inferior), authoritarianism (i.e., preference for control over people with mental illness), and unpredictability (i.e., the behavior of people with mental illness is unreliable). We hypothesized that participants who watched the film Joker would display an increase in their fear/avoidance of people with mental illness and their support for authoritarian approaches to their treatment. Consistent with these hypotheses, participants who viewed Joker displayed a significant increase in the fear/avoidance and authoritarian subscales of the PPMI, relative to participants that watched Terminator. In Study 2, in an attempt to mitigate the impact of Joker on prejudice towards people with mental illness, directly after the film we displayed educational and counter-stereotypical statements on-screen that challenged the view that people with mental illness are violent. A control group viewed Joker without these statements. Identical to Study 1, all participants completed the PPMI scale before and after viewing the film. We hypothesized that participants who viewed Joker with the statements would display lower prejudice relative to the control condition. Unfortunately, participants in the experimental and control conditions displayed a comparable increase in prejudice. Together, these studies confirm the negative effect of media portrayals of mental illness (as depicted in Joker) and demonstrate that these effects are not easily mitigated.
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spelling pubmed-95986992022-10-27 Why So Serious? An Attempt to Mitigate the Short-Term Harmful Effects of the Film Joker on Prejudice toward People with Mental Illness Poulgrain, John William Bremner, Niquaila May Zimmerman, Hannah Jao, Chia-Wei Winter, Taylor Riordan, Benjamin Charles Bizumic, Boris Hunter, John Scarf, Damian Behav Sci (Basel) Article The media perpetuates many harmful stereotypes about people with mental illness. In two studies, we demonstrate the impact of negative media portrayals of mental illness on prejudice and attempt to mitigate these negative effects. Specifically, in Study 1, participants watched the movie Joker, a recent film which associates mental illness with violent behavior, or a control film (Terminator). Participants completed the Prejudice towards People with Mental Illness (PPMI) scale before and after viewing their respective films. The PPMI consists of four dimensions: fear/avoidance (i.e., wanting to avoid people with mental illness), malevolence (i.e., viewing people with mental illness as inferior), authoritarianism (i.e., preference for control over people with mental illness), and unpredictability (i.e., the behavior of people with mental illness is unreliable). We hypothesized that participants who watched the film Joker would display an increase in their fear/avoidance of people with mental illness and their support for authoritarian approaches to their treatment. Consistent with these hypotheses, participants who viewed Joker displayed a significant increase in the fear/avoidance and authoritarian subscales of the PPMI, relative to participants that watched Terminator. In Study 2, in an attempt to mitigate the impact of Joker on prejudice towards people with mental illness, directly after the film we displayed educational and counter-stereotypical statements on-screen that challenged the view that people with mental illness are violent. A control group viewed Joker without these statements. Identical to Study 1, all participants completed the PPMI scale before and after viewing the film. We hypothesized that participants who viewed Joker with the statements would display lower prejudice relative to the control condition. Unfortunately, participants in the experimental and control conditions displayed a comparable increase in prejudice. Together, these studies confirm the negative effect of media portrayals of mental illness (as depicted in Joker) and demonstrate that these effects are not easily mitigated. MDPI 2022-10-07 /pmc/articles/PMC9598699/ /pubmed/36285953 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs12100384 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Poulgrain, John William
Bremner, Niquaila May
Zimmerman, Hannah
Jao, Chia-Wei
Winter, Taylor
Riordan, Benjamin Charles
Bizumic, Boris
Hunter, John
Scarf, Damian
Why So Serious? An Attempt to Mitigate the Short-Term Harmful Effects of the Film Joker on Prejudice toward People with Mental Illness
title Why So Serious? An Attempt to Mitigate the Short-Term Harmful Effects of the Film Joker on Prejudice toward People with Mental Illness
title_full Why So Serious? An Attempt to Mitigate the Short-Term Harmful Effects of the Film Joker on Prejudice toward People with Mental Illness
title_fullStr Why So Serious? An Attempt to Mitigate the Short-Term Harmful Effects of the Film Joker on Prejudice toward People with Mental Illness
title_full_unstemmed Why So Serious? An Attempt to Mitigate the Short-Term Harmful Effects of the Film Joker on Prejudice toward People with Mental Illness
title_short Why So Serious? An Attempt to Mitigate the Short-Term Harmful Effects of the Film Joker on Prejudice toward People with Mental Illness
title_sort why so serious? an attempt to mitigate the short-term harmful effects of the film joker on prejudice toward people with mental illness
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9598699/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36285953
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/bs12100384
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