Stigma: A Sociological and Neuroscientific Review

The term "stigma" was first used by the Greeks to describe physical sins intended to highlight something peculiar and negative about the signifier's moral standing (Goffman, 1963). The signs, which were burned or sliced into the body, declared that the bearer was a traitor, a slave, or a criminal (in general a tarnished individual who should be avoided, particularly in public areas; Goffman, 1963) Stigma is a tool used by those who want to hold other people down, in order to achieve their goals and specifically in situations in which stigma processes serve the goals of stigmatisers with regard to the exploitation, domination, or exclusion of others (Link & Phelan, 2014). Over the past 20 years, there has been a significant increase in social science study on stigma, especially in social psychology, where scholars have clarified how people create cognitive categories and connect those categories to stereotyped views (Link & Phelan, 2001). In this multidisciplinary study we review stigma from a sociological standpoint by dwelling into the negative impact of stigma on society as well as from a neuroscientific standpoint by investigating the neural correlates of stigma.