TY - JOUR
T1 - Infectious Disease Stigmas
T2 - Maladaptive in Modern Society
AU - Smith, Rachel A.
AU - Hughes, David
N1 - Funding Information:
This article was supported by Award Number P50-DA010075 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
PY - 2014/4
Y1 - 2014/4
N2 - At multiple times in human history people have asked if there are good stigmas. Is there some useful function stigmas serve in the context of our evolutionary history; is stigma adaptive? This article discusses stigmas as a group-selection strategy and the human context in which stigmas likely appeared. The next section explores how human patterns have changed in modern society and the consequences for infectious disease (ID) stigmas in the modern age. The concluding section suggests that while social-living species may be particularly apt to create and communicate ID stigmas and enact ID-related stigmatization, such stigma-related processes no longer function to protect human communities. Stigmas do not increase the ability of modern societies to survive infectious diseases but, in fact, may be important drivers of problematic disease dynamics and act as catalysts for failures in protecting public health.
AB - At multiple times in human history people have asked if there are good stigmas. Is there some useful function stigmas serve in the context of our evolutionary history; is stigma adaptive? This article discusses stigmas as a group-selection strategy and the human context in which stigmas likely appeared. The next section explores how human patterns have changed in modern society and the consequences for infectious disease (ID) stigmas in the modern age. The concluding section suggests that while social-living species may be particularly apt to create and communicate ID stigmas and enact ID-related stigmatization, such stigma-related processes no longer function to protect human communities. Stigmas do not increase the ability of modern societies to survive infectious diseases but, in fact, may be important drivers of problematic disease dynamics and act as catalysts for failures in protecting public health.
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U2 - 10.1080/10510974.2013.851096
DO - 10.1080/10510974.2013.851096
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84897038914
SN - 1051-0974
VL - 65
SP - 132
EP - 138
JO - Communication Studies
JF - Communication Studies
IS - 2
ER -