Bottom-Up Mental Illness Stigma Toward Leaders
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Authors
Scanlon, Michaela
Date
2025-07-10
Type
thesis
Language
eng
Keyword
Mental health , Stigma , Mental Illness , Leadership
Alternative Title
Abstract
In this dissertation, I draw from social cognitive theories of mental illness stigma and social categorization to explore “bottom-up” mental illness stigma toward leaders. I propose that leaders perceived as experiencing a mental illness are not immune from mental illness stigma and are subject to reduced competence perceptions from employees. In turn, perceiving one’s leader as incompetent diminishes employees’ own work motivation and performance. In addition, I explore the moderating role of leader gender. I test my conceptual model across three studies.
Study 1 involved a time-separated survey of 126 full-time North American employees using behavioral indices of perceived leader major depressive disorder (MDD) and substance use disorder (SUD) and peer reports of employees’ performance. Results from Study 1 support my conceptual model but do not find leader gender as a significant moderator.
Study 2 (N = 489) used vignette profiles of leaders to manipulate either a label (i.e., diagnosis) or behaviors, and introduced a novel measure of subtle discrimination in a 2 (gender: male, female) x 7 (mental illness: MDD label, MDD behavior, SUD label, SUD behavior, hypertension label, hypertension behavior, control) experiment. In addition, I introduce an implicit measure of subtle discrimination using an e-mail response task. Findings from Study 2 further support my conceptual model, but only for behavioral manipulations, suggesting labels may be weaker stigma signals. Moreover, gender emerges as a significant moderator of MDD, where the indirect effects of MDD are only significant for male leaders and not female leaders.
Finally, Study 3 (N = 618) manipulated vignette descriptions of either a leader or a peer in a 2 (relationship: employee-leader, employee-peer) x 3 (mental illness: MDD, SUD, control) x 2 (gender) experimental study. Results provided considerable support for my main hypotheses, but do not clarify the role of gender in mental illness stigma.
Taken together, these studies reveal how and why mental illness stigma toward leaders can backfire, hurting employees’ work motivation and performance. Conceptual and practical implications are discussed, and suggestions for future research are offered.
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Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International