Communal Coping With The Stigma Of Expectancy Violations In Service Dog Handlers With Invisible Disabilities

Abstract

This study aimed to give voice to service dog handlers with invisible disabilities. This study explored how handlers perceived the public’s expectations of what a service dog handler should be and how handlers communicatively construct their identities in public to counter or match this expectation. In addition, this study explored how the participants experienced stigma and how they normalize their experiences to manage or reduce the stigma they experience. 35 service dog handlers with invisible disabilities participated in in-depth interviews with the researcher. The researcher approached the data from a phronetic iterative approach and conducted a thematic analysis of the data (Tracy, 2020). Several themes yielded from the interviews warranted in-depth discussion as they shed insights on future theoretical and practical advancement, including how to broaden the definition of communal coping, how rumination acts as a stigma management strategy, and how concertive control acts as communal stigma management.