The Social Construction of Attitudes: Functional Consensus and Divergence in the U.S.Public’s Reactions to AIDS

Since the earliest days of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, public reactions to the disease have been shaped by a variety of factors. AIDS has been regarded as a deadly and transmissible illness. At the same time, it has been widely perceived as a disease that disproportionately affects society’s out-groups, especially gay men, nongay men who have sex with other men, and people who share needles for injecting drug use (Captanio & Herek, 1999; Herek, 1999; Herek & Capitanio, 1999).