Stereotypes of the Homeless:

1
Stereotypes of the Homeless The Targets
Perspective Carolyn Weisz, Psychology Renée
Houston, Communication Studies University of
Puget Sound Contact cweisz_at_ups.edu. Please do
not cite without permission of authors. Student
Assistants Carrie Clark, Karen Czerniak, Sonia
Ivancic, Tom Van Heuvelen, Alex Westcoat,
Natalie Whitlock, Jenny Yu Supported by The
Pierce County Road Home Leadership Team and the
Boeing Company
2
Introduction

• Homeless individuals face potential health and
  safety risks, and they are also the targets of
  social stigma. Research suggests that attitudes
  toward homeless people are extremely negative
  (e.g., Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, Xu, 2002 Harris
  Fiske, 2006 Phelan, Link, Moore Stueve, 1997).
  As part of an interdisciplinary project on
  homelessness in Pierce County, WA, this research
  examined homeless peoples own perceptions of
  their group as well as their beliefs about how
  their group is perceived by others. Homeless
  individuals beliefs about negative attitudes
  others hold toward them are important to
  understand because these beliefs may affect job-
  and help-seeking behaviors, and other variables
  related to well-being. We predicted that these
  beliefs would be quite negative, and,
  specifically, more negative than homeless
  individuals own beliefs about their group and
  than perceptions reported by individuals with
  homes.

3
Introduction

• Homeless individuals face potential health and
  safety risks, and they are also the targets of
  social stigma. Research suggests that attitudes
  toward homeless people are extremely negative
  (e.g., Fiske, Cuddy, Glick, Xu, 2002 Harris
  Fiske, 2006 Phelan, Link, Moore Stueve, 1997).
  As part of an interdisciplinary project on
  homelessness in Pierce County, WA, this research
  examined homeless peoples own perceptions of
  their group as well as their beliefs about how
  their group is perceived by others. Homeless
  individuals beliefs about negative attitudes
  others hold toward them are important to
  understand because these beliefs may affect job-
  and help-seeking behaviors, and other variables
  related to well-being. We predicted that these
  beliefs would be quite negative, and,
  specifically, more negative than homeless
  individuals own beliefs about their group and
  than perceptions reported by individuals with
  homes.

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Participants and Methods

• Homeless Sample
• 214 homeless adults (116 men and 98 women)
  recruited at many locations throughout Pierce
  County, WA, completed surveys orally or in
  writing. They received a 20 gift card.
• Age 19-65 years.
• Race 55 White, 21 Black, 8 Native American,
  5 Hispanic, 1 Asian, 10 Mixed or Other.
• 43 reported having a diagnosed mental illness.
  44 reported a drug or alcohol addiction. 30
  reported currently using drugs or alcohol on a
  regular basis.
• Comparison Sample
• 50 business leaders and residents were recruited
  from three sources a master mailing list of
  Pierce County businesses, the Qwest-dex phone
  book, and a list of citizens who had participated
  in a survey on attitudes on an Affordable Housing
  Levy. Participants completed a survey prior to
  engaging in focus group discussions on
  homelessness. They received 50.

5
Stereotype Measure

• Homeless and non-homeless participants indicated
  whether they thought five statements representing
  negative stereotypes about the homeless were true
  or false.
• Most of the homeless are drug addicts or
  alcoholics.
• Most of the homeless do not want to work.
• The homeless are largely responsible for petty
  crime.
• Large homeless populations create fear and danger
  in communities.
• Most homeless people dont want to be helped.
• Homeless participants also indicated the answer
  that they thought non-homeless individuals would
  choose most often for each item, and answered a
  battery of other measures.

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Table 1. True Responses to Statements about
Homeless People
7
Results

• Our primary analyses compared the sum of true
  responses for the five items for the homeless
  participants (alpha .57), the homeless
  participants beliefs about the outgroup
  responses (alpha .88), and the non-homeless
  participants (alpha .53). As expected,
  homeless participants thought outgroup members
  would endorse significantly more items as true
  than outgroup members actually endorsed, t(251)
  8.49, p lt .001, and than homeless individuals
  endorsed as true themselves, t(191) 16.08, p lt
  .05 (See Table 1). The mean number of items
  actually endorsed by homeless and non-homeless
  individuals did not differ, t(243) .94, p
  .35.
• Analyses of individual items were conducted
  using chi-square and McNemar tests. For the four
  items that involved negative characteristics of
  homeless people, the frequency of true responses
  was higher for homeless individuals perceptions
  of the outgroups responses than for their own
  beliefs, ps lt .001, and the actual beliefs
  reported by the non-homeless, ps lt .001.
  Homeless and non-homeless individuals own
  responses did not differ for these items, ps gt
  .10.

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• For the single item describing beliefs about
  the effects of homeless individuals on the
  community (i.e., create fear and danger),
  homeless individuals beliefs about the responses
  of the non-homeless and the non-homeless own
  responses did not differ, p gt .10, and were both
  higher than homeless individuals own beliefs, p lt
  .001.
• Exploratory analyses revealed that the
  responses of the homeless sample did not vary by
  gender, but that White homeless participants
  thought the outgroup had more negative
  impressions of the homeless than did non-White
  homeless participants, F(1, 175) 21.62, p lt
  .001. There were no effects of race or gender
  for homeless individuals own responses.

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Discussion

• Our findings suggest that homeless individuals
  believe that they are viewed quite negatively by
  those who do not share their homeless status.
  Moreover, they perceive these negative
  stereotypes as more extreme than the views they
  hold themselves about homeless individuals as a
  group. These findings add to the larger
  literature on stigma which examines perceptions
  of discrimination from the targets perspective
  (e.g., Levin van Laar, 2006 Major OBrien,
  2005).
• We also found that homeless peoples
  perceptions of negative stereotypes held about
  them are more negative than the perceptions
  reported by a sample of non-homeless individuals
  from the same community. It is difficult to
  discern whether this difference reflects
  inaccurate perceptions held by the homeless or
  reporting biases by the non-homeless. The fact
  that non-homeless individuals were more willing
  to endorse a statement about the negative effect
  of homeless people on the community than
  statements about negative characteristics of
  homeless people suggests that some form of social
  desirability bias or modern prejudice (e.g.,
  Gaertner Dovidio, 1986) may indeed be present.

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• Regardless of the accuracy of perceptions by
  homeless people about the negative attitudes
  others hold about them, these beliefs may have
  important practical consequences. Our ongoing
  research will examine links between homeless
  peoples perceptions of stigma and outcomes
  related to well-being and behavior. For example,
  individuals who fear negative judgment or
  treatment may be less likely to apply for jobs,
  join community organizations, or seek help or
  services.

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References

• Fiske, S. T., Cuddy, A. J. C., Glick, P., Xu,
  J. (2002). A model of (often mixed) stereotype
  content Content and warmth respectively follow
  from perceived status and competition. Journal of
  Personality and Social Psychology, 82, 878-902.
• Gaertner, S. L., Dovidio, J. F. (1986). The
  aversive form of racism. In J. F. Dovidio S. L.
  Gaertner (Eds.) Prejudice,
• discrimination, and racism (pp. 61-89). San
  Diego Academic Press.
• Harris, L. H., Fiske, S. T. (2006).
  Dehumanizing the lowest of the low Neuroimaging
  responses to extreme out-groups. Psychological
  Science, 17, 847-853.
• Levin, S., van Laar, C. (Eds.) (2006). Stigma
  and group inequality Social psychological
  perspectives. Mahway, NJ Lawrence Erlbaum.
• Major, B., OBrien, L. T. (2005). The social
  psychology of stigma. Annual Review of
  Psychology, 56, 393-421.
• Phelan, j. C., Link, B. G., Moore, R. E.,
  Stueve, A. (1997). The stigma of homelessness
  The impact of the label homeless on attitudes
  toward poor persons. Social Psychology Quarterly,
  60, 323-337.