The Impact of Effort and Diagnoses Type on Perceived Legitimacy and Controllability of ADHD Diagnosis in Students

Abstract

Mental illness is stigmatized - people have negative perceptions of individuals with a mental illness. Sometimes people question whether a person legitimately has a mental illness or not, and whether it is controllable or not. The goal of this research is to examine the impact of how the mental illness was diagnosed and a person’s behavior, specifically the amount of effort they put forth on a task, will impact people’s perception of whether the stigma is legitimate and controllable. To investigate the stigma tied to the effort and diagnosis in the context of legitimacy and controllability, I will examine the perception of ADHD diagnoses in a school context where the symptomology of ADHD can be prominent. The study uses a one-way between between-subjects design with three levels experimental design to examine how two factors—the source of an ADHD diagnosis (clinical vs. self-diagnosed) and the level of academic effort (high vs. low)—influence perceptions of legitimacy and controllability. The results of this study found that participants in the self-diagnosed conditions to be perceived as having more controllability and less legitimate compared to the clinical condition. The data also supports that high effort increased legitimacy and lowered control in the self-diagnosed conditions. Further research must be done to understand the legitimacy and controllability in the clinical conditions. This study provides vast opportunity to understand the social factors that contribute to perceptions of ADHD and mental health more broadly.