Do they do what they say? Questioning the link between self-reported attitudes towards people with intellectual

disabilities and actual behaviour

Katrina Scior, Michelle Wilson & Richard GroveDivision of Psychology & Language Sciences, University College London

Background

Need to obtain as accurate a picture of attitudes as possible:

•To track changes over time

•To identify targets for intervention

•To evaluate impact of interventions

3 Component Model of Attitudes

Cognitive component (how one thinks about X)

Affective component (how one feels about X)

Behavioural component (how one acts towards X)

BUT…

•Self-report methods dominate the field

•Constant shortcoming: limited attention to link

Cognitive & Affective Aspects of Attitudes

measuredActual Behaviour

Why is reliance on self-report problematic?

• Social desirability bias

• Demand characteristics

Ways to get around thisWerner (2015, JIDR): Direct versus indirect questionsVignette of 30 year old man with ID who turns to you/Joseph with a question, then:(1)Direct questions: How would you think, feel and behave? (2)Indirect: how would Joseph think, feel and behave in same situation?In (2) found higher levels of stigma, including more negative affect, withdrawal, avoidance and less helping

Ways we are researching

1. Implicit attitudes 2. Relationship between these and explicit

attitudes3. Direct tests of real life behaviour4. Relationship between such behaviour and

measures of explicit and implicit attitudes

Relationship between explicit and implicit attitudes (Wilson & Scior, under review)

326 participants, 18 years + (M= 35 years, SD = 12.07)Mostly highly educated (78.2% graduates)1.Single Target –Implicit Association Test2.Community Living Attitude Scale-ID version (CLAS-ID)Two social distance scales:3.Intellectual Dis. Literacy Scale (IDLS)4.Multidimensional Attitude Scale on Mental Retardation (MASMR)

Assessing Implicit attitudes

The Implicit Association Test (IAT)usually two categories

For a taster see Project Implicit @ HarvardScore=

Response time + Error rate

Words as stimuli, not picturesNo comparison category (e.g. white vs black)

(1) Attribute category words are sorted into two categories (pleasant or unpleasant) using 2 keyboard keysPleasant words: happiness, laughter, joyful, rainbow, sunshine

Unpleasant words: sickness, hatred, disease, terrible, poison

(2) Words attributed to target category ID added to one or other response key: dependent, mental handicap, slow learner, impaired, special needs

Single Target IAT (ST-IAT) specific to ID(Wilson & Scior, under review)

Congruent condition

Pleasant UnpleasantOr

Intellectual Disabilities

Special Needs

Incongruent conditionPleasant UnpleasantOrIntellectual Disabilities

Special Needs

Participant sorts stimulus words across 5 blocks (20 to 40 trials each)Timed test: speed and error rate determine score

Distribution of participants across ST-IAT score ranges

N

%

Strong negative (-2 to -0.65)

25

7.60

Moderate negative (-0.65 to -0.36) 89 27.05

Slight negative (-0.36 to -0.15) 70 21.28

No preference / neutral (-0.15 to 0.15) 85 25.84

Slight positive (0.15 to 0.36) 44 13.37

Moderate positive (0.36 to 0.65) 12 3.65

Strong positive (0.65 to 2) 4 1.21

Key Findings N M SD

ST-IAT d-scorea

329

-0.18

0.34

IDLS Social Distanceb 338 2.52 1.17

MASMR Social Distancec 338 1.42 0.43

CLAS-IDd

Empowerment 338 4.64 0.83

Exclusion 338 1.51 0.71

Sheltering 338 3.30 0.82

Similarities 338 5.51 0.64

a Scores range from -2 to 2 (-2 to -0.15 negative bias, 0.15 to 2 positive implicit biasb Scores range from 1 to 7 (lower scores =lower social distance)c Scores range from 1 to 4 (lower scores =lower social distance)d Scores range from 1 to 6 (Exclusion & Sheltering: higher scores=pro exclusion/paternalism; Empowerment & Similarities: higher scores=pro inclusion/equality)

• Sample showed particularly positive explicit attitudes towards individuals with ID

• MASMR social distance scores similarly low as representative Canadian general population sample (Ouellette-Kuntz et al., 2010)

• But neutral to slightly negative implicit attitudes; 35% held moderately to strongly negative implicit attitudes

Summary

Correlations ST-IAT with explicit measures

Measure

1

2

3

4

5

6

1

ST-IAT

--

2 CLAS-ID Empowerment

.002

--

3

CLAS-ID Exclusion

-.07

-.38**

--

4

CLAS-ID Sheltering

.01

-.33**

.16**

--

5

CLAS-ID Similarities

.01

.45**

-.43**

-.23**

--

6

IDLS Social Distance

-.12*

-.39**

.41**

.22**

-.37**

--

7

MASMR Social Distance

-.06

-.40**

.42**

.23**

-.42**

.57**

Kendall’s Tau-b Bonferroni corrected (Wilson & Scior, under review)

The role of participant characteristics

Implicit attitudes did not vary according to participants’:•level or type of contact with people with ID•gender •educational attainment

Frequency of contact

In contrast, all four affected explicit attitudesNo/infrequent contact

Daily contact

What does this tell us?

Implicit attitudes are less positive than explicit attitudes, BUT:Do implicit attitudes provide a more realistic reflection of general antipathy?Do they reflect ‘aversive disablism’?e.g. advocate empowerment and inclusion of people with ID, but choose not to use shared leisure facilities

Or Do implicit attitudes simply reflect widespread negative stereotypes?

What is the likely impact on behaviour?Meta-analytic data suggest:1.Implicit attitudes have moderate predictive validity of an individual’s behaviour (Greenwald et al., J. Pers. Soc. Psychology, 2009)

2.Behaviours not consciously controllable, e.g. eye contact or body language, more influenced by implicit attitudes. More deliberate behaviours, e.g. verbal interactions, more influenced by explicit attitudes (Dovidio et al., J. Pers. Soc. Psychology, 2002)

3.Explicit attitudes likely to influence behaviour when person has motivation or time to consider consequences of their actions. 4.BUT, when time constrained or motivation low, implicit attitudes more likely to influence behaviour.

So?

Positive explicit attitudes may drive fairly positive deliberate behaviour towards people with ID

Negative implicit attitudes may drive subtly prejudiced non-verbal behaviours

But I’m still troubled by this behaviour thing dude…

So how on earth do we test this?

Implicit Attitudes

Explicit Attitudes

How have others tested the relationship?

Mostly, they haven’t!•Zsambok et al. (1999): survey relating to mock plan for opening a local group home for people with ID versus mock petition drive for said home.

Found only moderate correlation between reported opinions and number of petition signatures

•Mental health stigma: Norman et al., 2010; Tidswell, 2011 ”Set up chairs please!”

Current Study

Pilot RCT in 2ndary comprehensive schools

Measures & Procedure

1) Mock real life behaviour: vote on having apprentices with/without ID work in school cafeteria

2) Distraction Task3) Explicit: Attitudes towards Persons with ID

(ATPID)4) Paper based IAT5) Debrief and short education session

Paper based ST-IAT

• More attention needed to behaviour and to relationship attitudes behaviour

• Major constraint: poor understanding of concept of ID – need to create frame of reference but can be intervention in itself

• Further development work and research needed to use implicit measures in ID research

• Funding constraints often limit sampling- need to find ways around this

Conclusions

k.scior@ucl.ac.uk