Page 265 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

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COLELLA AND STONE
1987; Jones & Stone, 1995; Tringo, 1970). In our review, six out of the eight
studies reporting positive effects used a target person in a wheelchair or
on crutches. This actually corresponds to the "disability discrimination"
hierarchy research that shows that people respond most favorably to peo­
ple with physical disabilities compared to those with sensory or, especially,
mental disabilities.
Paraplegia, a wheel chair, or leg braces and crutches were used as a
disability manipulation in 21 out of 37 studies. Thus, it possible that we
are paying the most attention to a disability that evokes less negative re­
sponses than other disabilities or else elicits stronger social desirability
bias. This is not to say that we shouldn't study discrimination against per­
sons with paraplegia, but rather we should be careful about generalizing
across disabilities.
It is not useful to treat discrimination as a special case for each type of
existing disability. A framework (Stone & Colella, 1996) has been put forth
for examining those characteristics of disability that do lead to certain re­
actions that can be used to make generalizations. Stone & Colella (1996),
based on the work of Jones et al. (1984) posited that it is the following
features of disability that relate to negative reactions: aesthetic qualities,
danger or peril, course, origin, concealability and disruptiveness. None of
these characteristics has received systematic research in a discrimination
study. One characteristic associated with disability that has been system­
atically studied is the perceived cause or blame for the disability. Bordieri,
Drehmer, and their colleagues (Bordieri & Drehmer, 1986,1987,1988; Bor­
dieri, Drehmer, & Comninel, 1988; Bordieri, Drehmer, & Taricone, 1990)
have conducted research that has consistently found that the extent to
which respondents blame the target person for his or her disability mod­
erates the impact of disability on workplace evaluations. Based on these
findings we can conclude that to the extent that a person is perceived as
personally responsible for his or her disability, the worse reactions will be
toward that person. Systematic research of this sort needs to be conducted
on the other characteristics mentioned above.
Another issue that makes it difficult to generalize findings across dis­
abilities is that characteristic of "disability" is not only ambiguous from a
legal perspective, but also from a psychological perspective (on both the
part of observers and actors). The ADA (1990) defines an individual with
a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that
substantially limits one or more major life activities, has a record of such
an impairment, or is regarded as having such an impairment. Major life
activities are activities that an average person can perform with little or
no difficulty such as walking, breathing, seeing, hearing, speaking, learn­
ing, and working. This is a very broad and general definition. When the