Page 275 - Discrimination at Work The Psychological and Organizational Bases

COLELLA AND STONE
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Another explanation is one that focuses on intergroup relations by describ­
ing paternalization as one way of demonstrating that one is higher on the
social hierarchy (e.g. Fox & Giles, 1996a, 1996b) than the other person.
Finally, Hastorf, Northcraft, & Picciotto (1979) introduced the notion of
the "norm to be kind," arguing that persons with disabilities are often
treated better than others because there is a societal norm to be kind to the
"disadvantaged." Whatever the reason paternalization exists, it can have
severely negative consequences on the integration of persons with disabil­
ities in the workforce. Thus, paternalization needs to be studied as a form
of discrimination.
To our knowledge, there has been no direct examination of paternal­
ization as a form of disability discrimination. In our review, the num­
ber of studies finding positive disability effects (8 out of 37) suggests
that paternalization may indeed take place and manifest itself in terms
of inflated evaluations and personnel decisions (Bailey, 1991; Christman
& Branson, 1990; Christman & Slaten, 1991; Czajka & DeNisi, 1988; Nord­
strom, Huffaker, & Williams, 1998; Rose & Brief, 1979; Tagallakis, Amsel,
& Fichten, 1988) and unrealistic feedback (Hastorf et al., 1979). These find­
ings are usually attributed to the "norm to be kind" or to be thought as
arising from initially low expectations that were exceeded by the perfor­
mance of the person with a disability. Generally, this research concludes
that these effects are positive indications of how people react to those
with disabilities. However, if one considers that these inflated evalua­
tions are indications of paternalism, then these results are not so encour­
aging.
Research on social interaction between people with disabilities and
nondisabled people shows that nondisabled people ask people with dis­
abilities to do useless tasks to make the "person feel useful" (Fichten &
Bourden, 1986) or they communicate using "baby talk," condescending
language, depersonalizing language, or ignoring the disabled person by
talking to a third party (Fox, 1994). Furthermore, others may perceive the
recipient of patronization as being more weak and passive (Fox & Giles,
1996b). In workplace scenarios, this can translate into giving people easier
work assignments, holding lower expectations, treatment as a lower status
group member, and the perception of people with disabilities as child-like,
helpless, or passive. Patronizing behavior can also serve to threaten the
positive self-identity of persons with disabilities (Fox & Giles, 1996b). This
is evidenced by accounts from people with disabilities who are made to feel
incompetent at work because coworkers are overzealous in their attempts
to "help" them (Ainsley, 1988; Schneider, 1988). Colella (1996), using an
organizational socialization perspective, argued that paternalization can
have long-lasting career effects. However, again, there has been no research