The effect of participant age on attitudes toward people with

disabilities

Lauron Haney and Carrie BurkhardtHanover College

Legislation

• Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990o Provided protection from discrimination in areas such as

employment and public accommodations

• Of Americans with disabilities:o 18.6% reported being employed compared to 63.5% of

non-disabled Americans (U.S. Department of Labor)

o 61% reported the ADA having no effect on their life (2010 Kessler Foundation/NOD Survey of Americans with Disabilities)

Effects of Contact

• Extended contact with individuals with disabilities makes people's attitudes toward disabilities more positive. o Family members (Goreczny, Bender, Caruso, & Feinstein, 2011)

o Work experience (Goreczny et al., 2011)

o Educational programs (Klooster, Dannenberg, Taal, Burger, & Rasker, 2009; Cameron & Rutland, 2006)

Ableism

• Prejudice or discrimination against individuals with developmental, mental, or physical disabilitieso Belief that people with disabilities are unable to function

as full members of society or need to be "fixed" (Smith, Foley, & Chaney, 2008) 

Explicit attitudes

• Attitudes that the individual acknowledges possessing (McCaughey & Strohmer, 2005)

• Measured through• Self-reports of explicit attitudes• Projective measures (e.g., Multidimensional Attitudes

Toward Persons with Disabilities Scale)

Implicit attitudes

• Attitudes that are not consciously acknowledged (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998)

• Most widely measured through Implicit Association Tests (IAT) (Thomas, Smith, & Ball, 2007)

•  Utilized to prevent false reporting related to social desirability biaso Social desirability bias: responding in a manner to make

oneself appear more acceptable (McCaughey & Strohmer, 2005)

Basic premise of an IAT

• Computer-based• Designed to examine the strength of an individual's

automatic associations between a concept and an attribute• Measures response time when sorting concepts and

attributes into categories

IAT

• Faster pairing indicates a stronger association between the given target and attribute (Nosek, Greenwald, & Banaji, 2005; Thomas, Smith, & Ball, 2007)

• IAT results are a reflection on the society in which one lives (Agerstrom, Bjorklund, & Carlsson, 2011)

Hypotheses

• Hypothesis 1: We predicted that implicit attitudes toward individuals with physical disabilities would be more negative than explicit attitudes. 

• Hypothesis 2: We predicted that younger adults would report more positive explicit and implicit attitudes toward individuals with physical disabilities than would older adults.

Method

• Online survey • Contact with people with disabilities• Multidimensional Attitudes Toward People with Disabilities Scale• Explicit attitude self-report• Implicit Associations Test

• Recruited participants using social media websites and the Hanover psychology website

• Participants:  138 responded, 127 used• 34.6% male, 65.4% female• 18-60 years old (Mean=25.95 years, Median=22 years)

Measures

• Contact with disabled persons o Experience with people with disabilities (1-10 Likert scale)

Multidimensional Attitude Toward People with Disabilities ScaleMichelle went out for lunch with some friends to a coffee shop.  A woman in a wheelchair, with whom  Michelle is not acquainted, enters the coffee shop and joins the group.   Michelle is introduced to this person, and shortly thereafter, everyone else leaves, with only  Michelle and the woman in the wheelchair remaining alone together at the table.   Michelle has 15 minutes to wait for her ride.  Try to imagine this situation.

• Rate the likelihood that the individual in the scenario would feel, think, or behave in specific ways on a 5 point Likert scale o “Get up and leave”

Measures

• Self-reporto Which statement best describes you? 

o Strongly prefer abled persons to disabled persons.o Moderately prefer abled persons to disabled persons.o Slightly prefer abled persons to disabled persons. o Little preference.o Slightly prefer disabled persons to abled persons.o Moderately prefer disabled persons to abled persons. o Strongly prefer disabled persons to abled persons.

Measures

• Disability IAT https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/demo/selectatest.htmlo Self-report IAT results

o Strongly prefer abled persons to disabled persons.o Moderately prefer abled persons to disabled persons.o Slightly prefer abled persons to disabled persons. o Little preference.o Slightly prefer disabled persons to abled persons.o Moderately prefer disabled persons to abled persons. o Strongly prefer disabled persons to abled persons.

Comparison of Explicit and Implicit Attitudes

t(127)=6.48, p<0.001

Results

Three regressions:• Predictor variables:  age and experience with people with

disabilities• Outcome variable: MAS

o Not significant• Outcome variable: Self-report of explicit attitudes

o β=.48, t(123)=1.93, p=0.05 • Outcome variable: IAT

o β=.43, t(123)=1.68, p<0.10  • Older participants showed more negative attitudes toward

people with disabilities than did younger participants implicitly and explicitly.

Limitations and Future Directions

• Restriction of rangeo Few older participants

• How effective is having experience with people with disabilities?

Discussion

• Legislation seems to have been somewhat effective• People are not necessarily aware of implicit attitudes they

possess• In spite of differences in attitudes between younger and

older participants, discrimination still exists.

Questions?