Attitudes Towards Disabled Individuals: Situational Malleability and Perception of Moral Character

open_access
Open Access
Author:
Fullem, Orin
Area of Honors:
Psychology
Degree:
Bachelor of Arts
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Sean Laurent, Thesis Supervisor
Kenneth N. Levy, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
disability
prejudice
person perception
morality
Abstract:
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (2022), which assessed disability status and types among American adults 18 years of age or older, more than 1 in 4 non-institutionalized adults in the U.S. report having one or more cognitive, physical, or unspecified disability. Cross culturally, disability is often framed as the result of a moral failing of the disabled individual (Henderson & Bryan, 2004; Olkin, 2002). Thus, disability status may be used by people when evaluating moral character, and this biasing effect may be automatic or controlled in nature. To investigate the connection between disability and moral character judgment, two studies were developed. The first study focused on measuring the malleability of attitudes towards disabled individuals based on target ability status and the impact of target ability status on perceptions of their moral character. The second study further examined perceptions of moral character of disabled individuals by investigating how the severity of a moral infraction that has been committed may interact with target ability status. Establishing a relationship between disability and moral character judgment would be a necessary first step to guide further research on how the Moral Model of Disability impacts the lives of disabled people, but aside from finding in study two that disabled people are perceived to be more moral than able-bodied people following an infraction, findings from these studies were generally not significant.