Stigma and Empathy: An Organising Principle for the Continuum of Social Understanding

Stigma is a universal social phenomenon of significant importance to our understanding of social cognition. Stigma, and in-group out-group distinctions, have been shown to affect perception of emotions, intentions, and actions of people marked as members of a stigmatized category. Noting the lack of literature that conceptually organizes the concepts of stigma and empathy this paper reviews the relevant literature and proposes an organizing principle. This principle is derived from the continuum of social understanding. This principle states that the amount, and type, of information available on each point of this continuum enables stigmatization and empathy, to greater or lesser degrees.