Stereotypes about “competence” and “warmth” against people with disabilities

An experimental study using explicit and implicit measures

Abstract

Studies on stereotypes about people with disability, using measures of explicit judgments, have consistently demonstrated a compensatory pattern of “low in competence but high in warmth” trait ascriptions. On the other hand, results based on implicit measures generally indicate an association with both incompetence and coldness. However, evidence concerning implicit judgment remains to be relatively mixed. The present study tested the possibility that the inconsistency can be mainly attributed to the effects of extraneous variables due to the variability in idiosyncratic aspects of stimulus materials across the studies. On the basis of careful pilot testing, we developed an Implicit Association Test (IAT) consisting of stimulus materials that were ascertained to be equivalent in the strength of association with competence and warmth. Across Studies 1 and 2, our results consistently showed that people with disability were judged implicitly as low both in competence and warmth relative to those without disability, whereas replicating the compensatory judgments on the explicit measure. Implications of the discrepancy between explicit and implicit stereotypes concerning warmth versus coldness are discussed.