Introduction

In earlier chapters, it became clear that the negative reactions frequently received by persons associated with deviant conditions may turn into a type of social control that we have termed stigmatization. Although, as shown in Chapter 6, people in modern Western societies often show relatively strong egalitarian tendencies and disapproval of stigmatizing and prejudiced responses, persons with a deviant condition nevertheless frequently meet with stigmatization in these societies, with a social world that is at least in part chilly, cold, and hostile. As we have noted in Chapter 1, under these circumstances, where a deviant condition is stigmatized and generally seen as a shameful or discrediting attribute, it can be useful to denote deviant conditions with the term stigma. Nevertheless, for different reasons it may not be possible to sharply distinguish stigma from deviant condition. First, as will become clear in this chapter, the person associated with a deviant condition contributes to shaping the responses of the social environment. For example, a person with a minor facial abnormality may unwarrantly expect severe negative or stigmatizing responses from others, and accordingly behave in rather tense or defensive ways when meeting strangers. Clearly, in these cases the term stigma will be used prematurely when referring to the deviant condition. Second, as noted in previous chapters, it is often difficult to determine empirically to what type of social control observed negative responses belong.