The topic of stigma came to the attention of modern-day behav- ioral
science in 1963 through Erving Goffman's book with the engaging title,
Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Following its
publication, scholars in such fields as an- thropology, clinical
psychology, social psychology, sociology, and history began to study the
important role of stigma in human interaction. Beginning in the early
1960s and continuing to the present day, a body of research literature
has emerged to extend, elaborate, and qualify Goffman's original ideas.
The essays pre- sented in this volume are the outgrowth of these
developments and represent an attempt to add impetus to theory and
research in this area. Much of the stigma research that has been
conducted since 1963 has sought to test one or another of Goffman's
notions about the effects of stigma on social interactions and the self.
Social and clinical psychologists have tried to experimentally create a
number of the effects that Goffman asserted stigmas have on ordinary
social interactions, and sociologists have looked for eVidence of the
same in survey and observational studies of stig- matized people in
situations of everyday life. By 1980, a consider- able body of empirical
evidence had been amassed about social stigmas and the devastating
effects they can have on social interactions.