Children's Stereotypes of Visibly Physically Impaired Targets: An Empirical Study

Abstract

Twenty-five primary school aged children with physical impairments from three special schools and matched able-bodied controls from three ordinary primary schools in the Greater Manchester area participated in the study. It was designed to explore the traits that each group would attribute to a visibly physically impaired target. It was assumed that if a set of traits were to be selected consistently then this might reflect an underlying social stereotype. The majority of able-bodied respondents assigned seven traits to the 'disabled' target and this finding was in line with that of researchers who suggest that children stereotype those who are physically impaired. Children who themselves had a physical impairment appeared not to hold stereotypical beliefs about those who were 'handicapped'.

A cross‐sectional multivariate analysis of children's attitudes towards disabilities

“…Negative perceptions of peers with physical disabilities have been reported in other studies (Cohen et al. 1994; Bracegirdle 1995) including negative biases against visible disabilities such as amputation and paralysis (Woodard 1995). Degree of bias may vary with extent of functional restriction such that more negative attitudes are associated with greater physical limitations (Harper 1997).…”

“…Studies assessing children's attitudes towards peers with disabilities have used a variety of measures, many of which are unique to a given study. Measures have included interviews and drawings (Tamm & Prellwitz 2001), forced choice selection of trait descriptors (Bracegirdle 1995), and the semantic differential (Abrams et al. 1990; Townsend et al.…”

Theory of Mind and Children's Trait Attributions about Average and Typically Stigmatized Peers

“…In our study, children could assign positive, negative, or neutral traits to the focal characters. In previous research (e.g., Bracegirdle, ), children had to choose to assign a positive trait either to an in‐group or to an out‐group member but not to both characters. Thus, selection of the in‐group character may have reflected a preference for familiarity rather than denigration of out‐group members (Cameron et al, ).…”

“…An additional goal was to address a methodological limitation of past stereotyping research. Studies often employ forced‐choice paradigms that require children to designate characters as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (e.g., Bracegirdle, ). Moreover, in these paradigms, children cannot choose to designate more than one character as ‘good’.…”