It is well established that emphasizing a biogenetic etiology of mental health problems in anti-stigma interventions inadvertently increases potentially stigmatizing attitudes. The “mixed-blessings” model suggests that biogenetic explanations and greater stigma are linked by essentialism. The present study tests this hypothesis experimentally. In this online experiment, 367 subjects read either a biogenetic or a psychosocial explanation for the etiology of schizophrenia, followed by a vignette describing an individual who has schizophrenia. Subsequently, we measured (a) causal beliefs on the etiology of schizophrenia (as a manipulation check), (b) the degree of essentialist beliefs (mediator), (c) the extent to which subjects subscribed to assumptions of dangerousness, (d) prognostic pessimism, and (e) desire for social distance. Subjects reported a stronger agreement with the etiology they had been presented. Against our expectations, this did not result in higher levels of stigmatizing attitudes in the biogenetic vignette group. Correspondingly, mediation through essentialism could not be tested. In the psychosocial vignette group, biogenetic causal beliefs were associated with a stronger desire for social distance. Essentialist thinking fully mediated this effect. The evidence we found for the assumptions of the mixed-blessings extended to the psychosocial vignette group only. We explain this by the subjects’ different readiness to subscribe to biogenetic and psychosocial causal beliefs. We argue that the same levels of essentialism between the experimental groups contributed to the equal levels of stigmatizing attitudes. This underlines the fundamental importance of essentialism in stigma, going beyond a role in the psychological effects of biogenetic causal models.

众所周知，在反耻辱干预措施中强调心理健康问题的生物遗传病因会无意中增加潜在的污名化态度。“混合祝福”模型表明，生物遗传学解释和更大的污名与本质主义联系在一起。本研究实验性地检验了这一假设。在此在线实验中，有367位受试者阅读了精神分裂症病因的生物遗传学解释或心理社会学解释，接着是描述患有精神分裂症的个体的小插图。随后，我们测量了（a）精神分裂症病因的因果信念（作为操作检查），（b）本质主义信念的程度（介导者），（c）受试者对危险性假设的认可程度，（d）预后的悲观主义，以及（e）对社交距离的渴望。受试者报告与他们提出的病因有更强的一致性。出乎我们的意料，这并没有导致生物遗传插图组中更高程度的污名化态度。相应地，通过本质主义进行的调解无法得到检验。在社会心理小插图组中，生物遗传因果信念与对社会距离的强烈渴望有关。本质主义者的思想完全介导了这种效果。我们为混合祝福的假设找到的证据仅扩展到心理社会小插曲群体。我们通过受试者准备接受生物遗传和社会心理因果信念的​​不同意愿来对此进行解释。我们认为，实验组之间相同水平的本质主义导致了相同水平的污名化态度。