How ‘ableism’ is not what you think
In an article on prejudices against PWD or people with disabilities (where ‘disability’ is defined as “some sort of physical, mental or emotional limitation”), research conducted at Michigan State University brings to the fore conclusions about “Demographic, Experiential, and Temporal Variation in Ableism.” The purpose of the research was to extrapolate the present understanding of ‘ableism’ by testing implicit biases to understand the variety and degree of prejudices prevalent against PWD. They used Project Implicit’s Disability IAT (Implicit Association Test) to measure implicit biases and compared it to the explicit attitudes displayed by the test subjects.
As far as I understood, explicit biases are the conscious biases that people have which are easily controlled by showing restraint, whereas, the implicit biases are subconsciously (or unconsciously) embedded in the person which can’t be concealed intentionally. With this understanding, the overall inference drawn was that while implicit biases increased with age and over time, the tendency to display it explicitly (explicit bias) lowered.
In particular, they attributed the conclusions to three factors:
I) Demographics: The demographics aspect focused largely on two categorizations: age and gender. The implicit biases increased with the age of the test subjects, while the explicit biases dipped simultaneously. On the gender side, women felt less implicit biases, aligning with the stereotype that women are more compassionate toward stigmatized groups.
II) Time: Over time, the implicit biases of the test subjects increased whereas the explicit biases decreased, possibly explained by how they had a heightened sense of the negative experiences they face and the conscious decisions they made to control it more over time.
III) Experiences: The researchers measured the test subject’s contact with disabled people, with the scale ranging from “knowing someone” to “having constant contact.” This allowed the researchers to attribute the exceptional decrease in both implicit and explicit biases of some test subjects to the increased contact (and relations) with PWD.
The conclusions of the study aligned with my understanding of some key concepts of Social Psychology, for instance, how women felt less implicit bias toward PWD (or conversely, how men felt more implicit bias toward PWD). One possible explanation that I thought of, was that it was a result of Stereotype Threat. The pervasive stereotype that “women are more compassionate than men” might have induced a stereotype threat for the men, who therefore under the strenuous testing conditions displayed less explicit bias (so they don’t come off as indifferent or less compassionate; confirming the stereotype) while feeling comparatively greater implicit bias. On the other hand, the same stereotype may have instigated the women to feel less implicit bias (as they felt they were conforming to a positive trait stereotype) while displaying normative explicit bias. Thus, as implicit bias increased in men, it decreased in women, keeping other factors in control.
Another conclusion that piqued my interest was the decrease in both types of bias when test subjects had increased contact with PWD. The explanation, given in the article, behind this phenomenon was that as people interacted with a stigmatized group, they have more potential to develop a positive association with that group. This goes in sync with the Contact Hypothesis described by Elliot Aronson, wherein the idea was that once people could be brought into direct contact, they would encounter each other as real people rather than reducing them to stereotypes, thereby, reducing social essentialism. This, in turn, would foster greater understanding and more cohesive relations between the prejudiced populations.
To conclude, I feel like the results of this research give us a more in-depth understanding of how ‘ableism’ is affected by a plethora of factors that are not only hard to control but difficult to explicate. But keeping factors like demographics, time and experiences in the fray, we can create an outline of how implicit and explicit biases play a role in day-to-day interactions with groups that have faced and continue to face prejudices and discrimination. Explaining these results through fundamental concepts of Sociology and Social Psychology would help us break down such complex, intricate and pervasive structures into simpler social and cognitive constructs.
