Implicit and explicit attitudes toward athletes with disabilities

Journal of Rehabilitation,  July-Sept, 2006  by Michael J. White,  Vance Jackson,  Phyllis Gordon

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Negative attitudes toward persons with disabilities continue to exist (Link, Phelan, Bresnahan, Stueve, & Pescosolido, 1999). These attitudes are linked to behaviors such as social rejection (Davis, 1961; Evans, 1976; Link et al., 1999; Wright, 1983) and maintenance of higher levels of social distance toward persons with disabilities (Link et al., 1999; Olkin & Howson, 1994). Even though there is some suggestion that attitudes toward persons with disabilities have modestly improved in recent years (Kolodziej & Johnson, 1996), negative public attitudes have been recognized as frequent impediments to the success of persons with disabilities in social, educational and vocational contexts (Rao, 2004; Rubin & Roessler, 1995; Rusch, Wilson, Hughes, & Heal, 1995).

Examination of attitudes toward persons with disabilities has been unfortunately complicated by the limited number of assessments available and concerns about the validity of these self-report measures. Societal perceptions about persons with disabilities have most commonly been investigated through direct (i.e., explicit) means. Direct examinations have typically involved self-report surveys focused on the term "disability" without mention of specific disabling conditions or the context in which the disability occurs (Wong, Chan, Cardoso, Lam, & Miller, 2004).

The Attitudes Toward Disabled Persons Scale (ATDP) developed by Yuker, Block, and Campbell (1960) is one of the most widely used explicit or direct measures. The differing forms of the ATDP assess unidimensional attitudes about disability on a positive to negative continuum (Livneh, 1985). Despite its popularity, several researchers have questioned both the validity and usefulness of the measure. One major controversy involves the ATDP's structure; more recent work has indicated it measures a multidimensional rather than unidimensional attitude structure (Antonak, 1980; Livneh, 1985).

Partly as a response to concerns about the ATDP, the Scale of Attitudes Toward Disabled Persons (SADP) was developed approximately 20 years later (Antonak, 1982). The SADP is a multidimensional instrument that assesses disability attitudes as three components: Optimism-Concern for Human Rights, Behavioral Misconceptions, and Pessimism-Hopelessness. Despite the move to better understand the complexities of attitudes toward persons with disabilities, the ATDP and the SADP are both self-report measures that examine attitudes toward persons with disabilities as a group. In addition, both assess attitudes from a social perspective as opposed to a personal one. Questions typically center on how persons are, or should be, treated at the societal level (Gething, Lacour, & Wheeler, 1994). Both measures are subject to concerns about the influence of socially desirable responses and false positive scores. Although it may have been socially acceptable in Shakespeare's time to openly express negative attitudes toward persons with disabilities, it is much less so today. Hence, persons who hold negative attitudes may seek to hide them and may distort their responses to explicit assessments so that they make socially desirable responses. Each of these problems makes it difficult to accurately determine the prevalence of negative attitudes toward persons with disabilities.

Relatively recent research in social psychology introduces the possibility of assessing implicit attitudes, in addition to explicit attitudes (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995). Implicit attitudes and other implicit cognitive forms (e.g., stereotypes) reflect the continuing influence of past experience and learned associations. This influence is beyond conscious control and may be invoked or primed by even briefly presented stimuli (cf., Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell, & Kardes, 1986). Because they are beyond conscious control, measures of implicit attitudes are thought to be relatively immune from the influence of social desirability and self-presentation. This should be a major advantage in an area such as disability attitude research where these concerns are present (cf. Antonak & Livneh, 1995).

Although attitudes have been overwhelmingly measured using explicit measures, the role of implicit processes in social attitudes has been evident for a very long time (Greenberg & Banaji, 1995). Consider two of several possible examples. Halo effects, the first of these, involve the influence of an existing, but irrelevant, attribute on perceptions of a novel attribute (e.g., Thorndike, 1920). These effects are manifest in studies that have shown the height of university instructors to be erroneously recalled as a function of their academic status (Wilson, 1968), consumer products to be better liked if attractively wrapped (Howard, 1992), and attractive persons to be perceived as more intellectually competent than unattractive persons (Eagly, Ashmore, Makhijani, & Longo, 1991). A second example involves the influence of existing schemas on "instant attitudes" toward persons and events logically unrelated to the schema. Studies here have shown that strangers who have been to one's hometown are often better liked than those who have not (Fiske, 1982).