Social Attitudes Towards Tourette's
Tourette's is a misunderstood and misrepresented disorder in society. Humans create an image of an ideal human being in their mind, and when they meet someone that differs from that image, they view them differently. Most of these created images can be attributed to societal consensus and the influence of media.
Societal Consensus
As a society, we conform to certain standards and beliefs that are taught to us as little children. We are taught what is "normal" and look at those who aren't like us differently. Such can be seen in a study conducted by Friedrich, et al. that looked at children's attitudes to those with Tourette's (Friedrich, et al. 307). Children from 3rd to 5th grade were randomly assigned to watch a video about a boy who was displayed under three conditions: with Tourette's, with Tourette's plus information explaining his disorder, and without Tourette's (Friedrich, et al. 309). The study also measured the effect of gender, grade, and the presence of information on the attitude presented by the children (Friedrich, et al. 307). Once the students watched their video, they had to fill out a questionnaire that looked into their demographics, attitude, and behavioral intention toward the video (Friedrich, et al. 313). The researchers ended up determining that children viewed the boy without Tourette's more favorably than the boy with Tourette's (Friedrich, et al. 315). The students associated the boy without Tourette's to have more positive traits than the boy with Tourette's. The presence of the information in the beginning didn't affect the childrens' attitude toward Tourette's (Friedrich, et al. 316).
Media Influence
A study conducted by Fat, et al. looked into the public perception of Tourette's through YouTube comments on videos that related to the disorder (Fat, et al. 1011). The videos used for the study involved those that were the top 20 search results for the keywords Tourette's, Tourette's syndrome, Tourette syndrome, and tics (Fat, et al. 1012). Each video was rated on its portrayal of Tourette's as being either positive, negative, or neutral (Fat, et al. 1013). The top ten comments on each video were then evaluated on whether they were "sympathetic," "neutral," or "derogatory" (Fat, et al. 1013). The researchers found that 22% of the videos about Tourette's were negative in content, while 59% were positive and 20% neutral (Fat, et al. 1013). However, there was increased viewership and comments about Tourette's in a derogatory light on those videos that were considered negative, while there were limited views and comments on those videos that displayed Tourette's postively (Fat, et al. 1014).
