IMPLICIT ATTITUDES TOWARDS PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES

Abstract

People with disabilities (PWDs), one of the important minority groups, are exposed to certain attitudes and prejudices causing some problems in social life. Therefore, it is important to examine the causes and consequences of prejudices and attitudes toward PWDs. Our attitudes determine how we evaluate events or people. Our ideas and behaviors about a group or person are also affected by our explicit and implicit attitudes. People have different attitudes and behaviors, either negative or positive. PWDs are considered dependent, needy, incompetent, trustworthy or innocent. They can be perceived in different ways and exposed to both positive/negative attitudes and labeling. Prejudices toward PWDs are generally not shown explicitly due to social approval, but they exist implicitly and still affect the lives of the disabled through negative behaviors they cause. Implicit biases toward PWDs, caused by existential or evolutionary factors, are often not consciously noticed. Implicit biases that are not noticed cannot be intervened and intervention strategies cannot be developed. Hereby, this review aims to examine the attitudes and prejudices toward PWDs within the scope of explicit and implicit processes and to discuss the differences between explicit and implicit prejudices as well as the social-psychological effects of implicit prejudices and different ways to measure them.