[Social representation of the physically handicapped person. "Overcoming one's handicap": effects of family situation and of income].

Continuing the study of social representation of the physically handicapped, the authors of this article study the influence of income and family situation on the evaluation of a fictive handicapped person. In creating twelve portraits by crossing the modalities of these variables, they arrive at a factorial plan which allows them to prove the effect of income and family situation as well on the positive adjectives marked on a list of personality traits as on the evaluations given by means of a scale ranging from "has overcome his handicap very poorly" to "has overcome his handicap very well". Although the evaluations are in general favorable and in spite of the fact that only little information was given to the subjects, the responses are significantly different. In addition, the relation between the number of positive adjectives attributed and the values received on the scale make it evident that the notion of having well or poorly "overcome one's handicap" is socially evaluated. Finally, the interaction observed between the two studied variables shows that the fact of having a professional occupation is clearly more important if the described person is unmarried than if he is married.