Generalized Perceptions of People with Mental Illness as Exploitable

Exploitation of others is one method that humans use to acquire resources. People use cues to identify targets for exploitation, and evolutionary psychology predicts that the cues correspond to specific domains of exploitability. Previous research suggests that people perceive mental illness as a cue indicating sexual exploitability, but it is not clear if perceptions of exploitability are specific to sex or if they generalize to other domains. The current research examined generalized associations between exploitability and mental illness. Study 1 (N = 165) showed that participants rated cues of exploitability as more typical of people with mental illness than people without mental illness. In Study 2 (N = 236), participants rated people with mental illness as having increased vulnerability to exploitation across domains including abuse, cheating, cuckolding, sexual coercion, and killing. In Study 3 (N = 384) and Study 4 (N = 331), participants evaluated exploitability in real-world scenarios. In both studies, participants perceived a person with mental illness as significantly more exploitable for sex and money than a person with physical illness. Overall, the results of this research suggest that people perceive mental illness as a generalized cue of exploitability.