This experiment examined how two language features—linguistic agency and assignment of causality—of online support-seekers’ messages regarding depression influenced viewers’ perceived stigma and features of their support messages. Participants (N = 254) read and responded to an online support-seeking post about depression. Our results revealed that personal stigma toward a depressed individual was lower when the individual disclosed a biological cause for the depression and assigned agency to depression than agency to human. Additionally, when agency was assigned to depression with a biological rather than non-biological cause, more positive emotion words were utilized in participants’ response posts. Cognitive process words were used more often in response to messages with non-biological causality than biological causality.

该实验研究了在线支持寻求者关于抑郁症的信息的两种语言特征——语言代理和因果关系的分配——如何影响观众的耻辱感和他们支持信息的特征。参与者 (N = 254) 阅读并回复了关于抑郁症的在线寻求支持的帖子。我们的研究结果表明，当个人披露抑郁症的生物学原因并将代理权分配给抑郁症时，对抑郁症的个人耻辱感低于对人类的代理权。此外，当机构被分配到具有生物学而非非生物学原因的抑郁症时，参与者的回复帖子中使用了更多的积极情绪词。认知过程词更常用于响应具有非生物因果关系的信息而不是生物因果关系。