Reframing mental illness: The role of essentialism on perceived treatment efficacy and stigmatization

People believe that treatments for illnesses are effective when they target the cause of the illness. Prior work suggests that biological essentialist explanations of mental illness lead people to prefer medications or other pharmacological treatments. However, prior work has not distinguished between biological and essentialist explanations. In three studies (total n = 517), we presented adults with vignettes about an individual with an...