Family members of people with disabilities' explicit and implicit disability attitudes.

PURPOSE

Family members of people with disabilities may hold a unique position in that they may both internalize and reinforce ableism, and work to fight it through empowerment and resistance, making them a useful group for study to elicit understandings of disability and disability attitudes. The aim of this study was to explore the explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) attitudes toward people with disabilities by family members of persons with disabilities.

RESEARCH METHOD

To do so, we analyzed secondary data from 180,701 family members, comparing their explicit and implicit disability attitudes and examining correlates with attitudes.

RESULTS

Findings from our study suggest that although family members do not consciously believe they have negative attitudes, they unconsciously prefer nondisabled people.

CONCLUSION

More work is necessary to reduce prominent and systemic negative attitudes about disability as most family members still had negative attitudes about people with disabilities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).