Chapter 3 analyzes some of the ways that stereotypes harm people’s sense of self and identity. One way is through expressive harm, which is the harm that results from the unwitting and inevitable perpetuation of stereotypes. Stereotypes have a pervasive cultural power that enables them to control people’s thoughts, feelings, behavior, and social interactions even when people actively disavow the stereotype. Other ways that stereotypes harm people’s sense of self and identity are through the internalization of oppressive social scripts, which ascribe motivations and expectations for behavior, and through stereotype threat, in which people inadvertently and paradoxically act in ways that correspond to stereotypes even as they are trying hard to avoid fitting stereotypes. When people with mental illness internalize oppressive social scripts and experience stereotype threat, they incorporate negative stereotypes into aspects of their experience and identity, which damages their identity and sense of self and also diminishes their autonomy.

Chapter 5 assesses harms that people with mental illness experience that are related to how their self is constituted. These include harms of de-individuation and mis-identification, but also, as this chapter focuses on, harms of social exclusion and dehumanization that result from status loss and moral distancing. Dehumanization occurs through both being reduced to a stereotyped trait and being viewed as lesser compared to others. Having a sense of belonging and being accepted as an equal member of a moral/epistemic/social community are important parts of being viewed as and viewing oneself as a full human being; these are also critical for developing and exercising autonomous agency as well as for well-being and flourishing. People with mental illness are often excluded from these communities as a result of public stigma, diminishing their autonomy and well-being. This chapter shows how dehumanization, social exclusion, and belonging uncertainty threaten belongingness and autonomy.

Chapter 1 examines what mental illness stigma is and analyzes the components of mental illness stigma to show how people with mental illness experience stigma in their daily lives. These components include labeling, stereotyping, prejudice, moral distancing, social exclusion, status loss, dehumanization, microaggressions, discrimination, and epistemic injustice. In each case, I use empirical evidence from the social psychology literature on stigma to show ways in which people with mental illness experience these forms of stigma. Next, I look at factors that affect the kind, degree, and scope of stigma associated with mental illness, including beliefs, political values, cultural values, socioeconomic status, education, and gender. Finally, I examine how many people experience compounding stigmas that come from multiple sources.

Chapter 2 assesses what stereotypes are and explains what makes them both wrongful and harmful. The chapter begins by defining stereotypes, explaining their relationship to prejudice and implicit bias, and showing how they are maintained due to cognitive biases. I examine factors that go into making the judgments involved with stereotyping. Then I analyze what makes stereotypes wrongful, including their rigidity, their falsity, and the way they overgeneralize about a person’s experience so as to erase its nuance and complexity. I look at descriptive and normative components of stereotypes and show that negative stereotypes always make a normative judgment about the badness and inferiority of a person who fits the stereotype.

Chapter 4 shows how internalized stigma often results in adaptive preferences that harm a person. When people incorporate aspects of negative stereotypes into their identity, they sometimes develop adaptive preferences by internalizing harmful social norms and beliefs embedded within these stereotypes. I show how people with mental illness often develop goals and desires that are shaped by these beliefs and social norms, which limits what they believe they are capable of, thus reducing their options for action and truncating their agency and autonomy. While adapting desires to one’s circumstances can be positive, as in positive adaptation, it is negative when it is harmful to a person. The adaptive preferences that result from this can be seen as rationality deficits that are oppressive and nonautonomous and that damage well-being and flourishing.

The introduction motivates the book’s arguments by showing how mental illness stigma remains pervasive despite greater awareness of mental health issues and more resources directed at mental health treatment and destigmatization. The forms of mental illness stigma most commonly expressed are stigma against people with severe mental illness who are perceived as homeless, and internalized stigma that people with mental illness project onto themselves. Mental illness stigma arises as a reaction to the violation of social norms of what a human being should be in the Western world in the twenty-first century. I give an account of stigma as the devaluing and discrediting of a person based on possessing a social trait that is seen as violating social norms, constituting a relationship of power. Components of stigma include labeling, stereotyping, prejudice, moral distancing, social exclusion, status loss, dehumanization, microaggressions, discrimination, and epistemic injustice. The chapter ends with a description of the book’s scope, methodology, and chapter outline.

This chapter examines the role of elite women as property owners and financial managers in the Late Roman Republic. It highlights how women, often perceived as temporary custodians of wealth, actively engaged in economic transactions, from land-ownership to commercial investments. While matrons such as Cornelia and ‖Turia’ were praised for their responsible management of wealth, others like Clodia and Fulvia were criticized, often as a tool for political delegitimization. Legal and social transformations, including increased autonomy in property management, enabled women to exert financial influence, sometimes even in political spheres. However, ancient sources frequently downplay or stigmatize their economic agency, portraying wealth as a destabilizing factor in gender and social hierarchies. By reassessing historical and literary evidence, this study sheds light on the complex relationship between Roman women, wealth and power, revealing their significant yet contested role in the economic framework of the Republic.

Chapter 4 examines three works: the Falucho monument, both in its creation and in its initial location in Buenos Aires and its subsequent relocation; the portrait of Eusebio de la Santa Federación, a jester by Juan Manuel de Rosas, which differs from other images of the same figure; and the representations of Tía Rosa, a pastry seller on the streets of Buenos Aires in the nineteenth century. It should be noted that, during this period, portraits of Afro-Argentines are rare and limited to military personnel, especially toward the end of the century. These three portraits depict a common soldier, a female pastry vendor or a cook, and a buffoon. So the question is why three people were portrayed who had trades or fulfilled roles effectively but not exclusively performed by a large part of the Afro-Argentine population. This assignment of social and labor roles, similar to those they were forced to perform during slavery, became stereotypical. This operation circumscribed Afro-descendants to the past, banishing them from the present in which the images were produced, and hence from the future as well.

This chapter examines the complex relationship between declining trust, increasing ethnic diversity, and immigration in contemporary societies. Exploring psychological mechanisms such as stereotypes, prejudices, intergroup contact, and perceived threat, the chapter reveals how diversity can challenge and foster societal trust under certain conditions. Theories, including social identity, realistic conflict, and contact hypothesis, illustrate how intergroup perceptions shape trust, especially when natives view immigrants through lenses of ingroup/outgroup distinctions, competition, and cultural threat. While stereotypes and prejudices often undermine trust, structured intergroup contact has shown potential to counteract these adverse effects. Furthermore, the chapter argues that policies promoting inclusive intergroup interaction, equal treatment in labor markets, and educational initiatives can cultivate mutual understanding and trust. By aligning immigration and social policies with these insights, societies can mitigate trust erosion and create a foundation for social cohesion amidst increasing diversity.

Wrongful convictions for imagined crimes that did not happen, including witchcraft and satanic sexual abuse, have been influenced by gender stereotypes. The role of intersecting forms of prejudice is examined through case studies of wrongful child abuse convictions of a gay man in New Zealand and lesbians in the United States. Case studies of the wrongful convictions of Florence Maybrick, Lindy Chamberlain and Kathleen Folbigg are related not only to their immediate cause of faulty forensics but also to perceived departures from gendered concepts of motherhood and wifehood. A similar theme is seen in the disproportionate wrongful convictions and false guilty pleas of women for the deaths of children in their care. Shaken baby syndrome played a role, but gender, racial and class prejudices were also often in play. Women, especially Indigenous women, are particularly vulnerable to making false guilty pleas. The possible role of stereotyped assumptions about male violence in sexual assault wrongful convictions will be examined. Sexual assault law reforms make it more difficult to correct wrongful convictions where consent is claimed as opposed to the minority of cases of stranger sexual assaults where DNA can prevent and remedy wrongful convictions.

This chapter reflects on possibilities for anti-racism in artistic practice. Drawing on the work of the diverse artists we have collaborated with in the project Cultures of Anti-Racism in Latin America (CARLA), I focus on two types of intervention that I believe help us to think about various ways of doing anti-racism through art. The two types are challenging stereotypes and working with communities, and I explore how various artworks engage with these modes of artistic action and how they create emotional traction and affective intensity. The aim of the exercise is to be productive and helpful in the struggle against racism by providing some tools that artists and organisations can use to think strategically about anti-racism as a practice and reflect on the opportunities and risks that attach to different interventions.