Social perception of the personality of the disabled

This paper examines the perception of disability in relation to the disability status of a hypothetical person and that of the experimenter. Meyer, Gouvier, Duke, and Advokat (2001) found that participants had positive attitudes towards disability if the experimenter was disabled. This experiment moves the study of perceptions about disability into the realm of personality. Participants (N = 120) read a scenario in which the target person was either disabled or nondisabled while sessions were conducted by either a disabled or a nondisabled experimenter. They rated the target on the Big Five Personality Scale that involves a self-rating and an others-rating. The participants believed that others view disabled people less positively than they themselves do.