Threat and Visibility Impact of Disabilities and Other Conditions on Social Distance Preferences

From Contact to Enact: Reducing Prejudice Toward Physical Disability Using Engagement Strategies

“…Quantitative questionnaires on physical disability used in large-scale, national surveys on the British and Danish perception and attitude toward people with physical disability ( Olsen, 2000 ; Staniland, 2011 ) already exist. So the questionnaire items was developed by selecting the questions from the previous questionnaires that made sense in relation to both the themes of the theater performance (e.g., employment, relationship and parenthood) and two standardized parameters of prejudice toward physical disability ( Coleman et al, 2015 ): (1) incompetence, that is, the perceived level of competence or lack of competence of a person with physical disability, often in specific tasks; and (2) social distance, that is, the level of intimacy a person is willing to have with another person, e.g., recognize, live near and associate with them ( Toriello et al, 2007 ; Ouellette-Kuntz et al, 2010 ). Measuring the amount of social distance through the degree of (un)comfortable experience in having relations with people with physical disability will signalize prejudice ( Abrams et al, 1990 ).…”

“…These stereotypical attitudes toward people with physical disability lead to a range of reactions including: bodily objectification and “intersubjective oppression” in everyday face-to-face interactions ( Toro, 2020 ), discrimination and marginalization in the labor marked ( Louvet, 2007 ; Grue, 2016 ) and in healthcare settings ( Toriello et al, 2007 ; Sterkenburg and Vacaru, 2018 ) and challenges in forming social relations such as friendships, which has been related to the fact that people without disability also express sadness and pity toward people with disability ( Harper, 1999 ; Lightfoot et al, 1999 ; Weiserbs and Gottlieb, 2000 ; Green, 2003 , 2007 ).…”