Physiological and self-reported reactions to the disabled and deviant.

Abstract

Ten female and 10 male college students were asked to (a) rank order 11 labels of disability and deviancy by desirability of acquisition, and (b) verbalize the labels while being tape recorded. Group and individual rank orders, and physiological reactions were measured by the Psychological Stress Evaluator to answer three questions: (a) Do people experience stress in relation to the disabled and deviant? (b) Are self-reported preferences related to the amount of stress exhibited toward various disabilities? (c) Do individuals experience more stress toward certain disabilities or deviancies than toward others? Significant stress was found as a group toward all labels, but great variability occurred with individuals. People did not express the same level of discomfort that was found with the physiological measure. Only one label elicited more stress than another. A psychophysiological model to explain the results was discussed.Negative reactions to the disabled tempted to distinguish differential and deviant have been well documen-perceptions of the disabled. ted in the research literature. In anIn his work with children, Richinvestigation of children's preference ardson (1961) established consistent for handicapped and non-hand-preferences in interpersonal percepicapped children, Richardson (1963) tions. In spite of no evidence that chilfound the non-handicapped child was dren were taught to "like" certain disalways preferred. Semmel and Dick-abilities more than others, a definite son (1966) had college students rank order of preference was found. Othorder various labels with the result ers (Semmel & Dickson, 1966; Wilson, that the disabled and deviant were Sakata & Frumkin, 1968) have estabranked significantly below the "nor-lished an order of preference for phymal white." Other studies have at-sical disabilities. Each study, however, Dr.

Psychophysiological Assessment of Prejudice: Past Research, Current Status, and Future Directions

“…Such failure, of course, makes it impossible to rule out adaptational effects and order effects. In Vander Kolk's (1976a) study, for example, participants rank-ordered their willingness to acquire 11 different "disabilities," and then read aloud the name of each disability. These utterances were tape recorded and later analyzed with the PSE.…”

“…The psychophysiological measures used in these studies included electrodermal activity (Heinemann et al, 1981;Kleck et al, 1966;Wesolowski & Deichmann, 1980;Zych & Bolton, 1972), heart rate (Gargiulo & Yonker, 1983;Marinelli & Kelz, 1973;Wesolowski & Deichmann, 1980), or the PSE (Vander Kolk, 1976aKolk, , 1976bKolk, ,4 1977a.…”

“…Except for a heart rate study by Marinelli (1974) that revealed only trends in the predicted direction, the other eight disability studies found psychophysiological reactivity to be a reliable indicator of emotional discomfort in the presence of disabled individuals introduced either i-n vivo or pictorially. The psychophysiological measures used in these studies included electrodermal activity (Heinemann et al, 1981;Kleck et al, 1966;Wesolowski & Deichmann, 1980;Zych & Bolton, 1972), heart rate (Gargiulo & Yonker, 1983;Marinelli & Kelz, 1973;Wesolowski & Deichmann, 1980), or the PSE (Vander Kolk, 1976aKolk, , 1976bKolk, ,4 1977a).…”

Direct and indirect methods to measure attitudes toward persons with disabilities, with an exegesis of the error-choice test method.

“…The direction of the corresponding attitude (e.g., pleasurable or unpleasurable, favorable or unfavorable) can not be assumed with clarity (Scott, 1968), although it is often inferred that the greater the magnitude of the emotional arousal the more unfavorable the attitude (Cook & Selltiz, 1964). Examples from the disability studies literature include the research by Wesolowski and Deichman (1980), Kleck, Ono, and Hastorf (1966), Zych and Bolton (1972), VanderKolk (1976a, 1976b, and Gargiulo and Yonker (1983).…”