This document discusses the relationship between self-reported attitudes and actual behaviors towards people with intellectual disabilities. While self-report measures dominate research in this area, they are limited by social desirability bias and may not accurately reflect behaviors. The authors explore alternative ways of measuring attitudes, including implicit measures and tests of real-life behaviors. Their research found that people reported more positive explicit attitudes than their implicit attitudes suggested. They hypothesize that implicit attitudes may better predict subtle prejudiced behaviors, while explicit attitudes influence more deliberate behaviors. The authors plan to further study this relationship by conducting an experiment measuring voting behaviors, attitudes, and implicit biases in secondary schools.

1. 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 Grove
Division of Psychology & Language Sciences, University College London

2. 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. 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)

4. BUT…
•Self-report methods dominate the field
•Constant shortcoming: limited attention to link
Cognitive & Affective
Aspects of Attitudes
measured
Actual Behaviour

5. Why is reliance on self-report problematic?
• Social desirability bias
• Demand characteristics

6. Ways to get around this
Werner (2015, JIDR):
Direct versus indirect questions
Vignette 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

7. Ways we are researching
1. Implicit attitudes
2. Relationship between these and explicit
attitudes
3. Direct tests of real life behaviour
4. Relationship between such behaviour and
measures of explicit and implicit attitudes

8. 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 Test
2.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)

9. Assessing Implicit attitudes
The Implicit Association Test (IAT)
usually two categories
For a taster see Project Implicit @ Harvard
Score=
Response time
+ Error rate

10. Words as stimuli, not pictures
No comparison category (e.g. white vs black)
(1) Attribute category words are sorted into two categories (pleasant
or unpleasant) using 2 keyboard keys
Pleasant 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)

11. Congruent condition
Pleasant Unpleasant
Or
Intellectual Disabilities
Special Needs

12. Incongruent condition
Pleasant Unpleasant
Or
Intellectual Disabilities
Special Needs
Participant sorts stimulus words across 5 blocks (20 to 40 trials each)
Timed test: speed and error rate determine score

13. 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

14. 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 bias
b
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)

15. • 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

16. 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)

17. 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 attitudes
No/infrequent
contact
Daily
contact

18. 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?

19. 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.

20. So?
Positive explicit attitudes may drive fairly
positive deliberate behaviour towards people
with ID
Negative implicit attitudes may drive subtly
prejudiced non-verbal behaviours

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

22. So how on earth do we test this?
Implicit Attitudes
Explicit Attitudes

23. 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!”

24. Current Study
Pilot RCT in 2ndary comprehensive schools

25. Measures & Procedure
1) Mock real life behaviour: vote on having
apprentices with/without ID work in school
cafeteria
2) Distraction Task
3) Explicit: Attitudes towards Persons with ID
(ATPID)
4) Paper based IAT
5) Debrief and short education session

27. Paper based ST-IAT

28. • 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

29. k.scior@ucl.ac.uk