The ‘how’ of HIV infection matters: social judgments and responsibility attribution in the context of the AIDS epidemic

Abstract

eople living with HIV are frequently blamed for their health condition, especially in case they became infected with the virus through behaviour that is considered as non-normative. The aim of the current study was to explore the impact of HIV representations and prevailing social norms on judgments about people living with HIV. The study had a quasi-experimental design and was conducted on a sample of 240 university students, completing their pedagogical studies degree. The participants were asked to read a vignette depicting a fictitious character that was infected by HIV through different modes of transmission (heterosexual contact, homosexual contact, IV drug use, blood transfusion) and make their judgments. The results indicated that judgments were influenced by respondents’ representations about the disease (contagious vs. infectious) and the social status of the HIV-positive person (deviant vs. non-deviant). Specifically, the participants who adopted a contagionist approach on HIV tended to hold more negative attitudes towards people living with HIV than those who perceived HIV as a transmissible disease. Furthermore, the participants appeared to be more judgmental towards persons who got infected through IV drug use or homosexual contact (norm-violating behaviours), than those who got infected through heterosexual contact or blood transfusion (normative behaviours). Overall, the results support the experimental hypothesis that responsibility attribution is based on the social desirability of the behaviours that were associated with the disease.