108 diabetes in the community has normalised its existence in many Indonesian communities. In regards to the perceptions among those with diabetes, due to the less stigmatising status of this condition, people with diabetes seemed to feel more normal and privileged. They also separated themselves from others with HIV, leprosy and schizophrenia as evident from the twofold higher SDS scores they reported for other groups. However, during the FGDs, they described having empathy and compassion towards people with HIV, schizophrenia and leprosy, and were well aware of the intricacies of having those diseases. Studies that have explored the development of social identity in individuals have shown that besides empathy, common experience of stigma and discrimination and the level of interrelatedness to those experiences are paramount in improving not only intergroup perception, but also building common group identity between members of the same group (Cortland et al., 2017; Crabtree et al., 2010; Gaertner et al., 1993). Participants with diabetes, though empathetic, lacked such understanding and relatedness towards stigma experiences of other groups as they reported experiencing little or no stigma themselves. This may have been the reason why even though they expressed empathy, they reported higher social distance towards the other groups.
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