The association between contact and intellectual disability literacy, causal attributions and stigma.
Only close, personal ties cut stigma toward people with ID; shallow hello’s don’t help.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team asked the adults how close they felt to people with intellectual disabilities. They used a five-step scale from "no contact" to "close family."
Each person also filled out stigma and blame scales. The researchers then ran stats to see if closer contact meant lower stigma.
What they found
People who listed "close friend" or "family" showed the lowest stigma scores. The link was real but small; contact explained only a large share of the difference.
Knowing someone with ID was not enough. Only the depth of the relationship mattered.
How this fits with other research
Critchfield (2015) used sneaky, indirect questions and saw higher stigma than R et al. found. The gap shows that direct surveys can hide real bias.
Ohan et al. (2015) tried a quick fix: tell people the R-word is out. It back-fired and raised stigma. R et al. remind us that real contact, not labels, moves the needle.
Matson et al. (2009) show adults with ID still live on the edge of community life. R et al. give a clue why: shallow contact keeps stigma alive.
Why it matters
You can’t fight stigma with posters alone. Push for deeper ties: peer clubs, shared jobs, or inclusive sports. Track how close those ties feel, not just if they exist.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Contact is seen as a key route to tackling stigma and discrimination. Contact theory states that the quality and type of contact, as well as circumstance of the contact experience, influence the effect of contact on prejudice. The majority of research in intellectual disabilities though has focused on contact as present or absent only. METHOD: A total of 1264 adult members of the UK general population completed measures of symptom recognition, social distance (as measure of external stigma) and causal beliefs in response to a diagnostically unlabelled vignette, depicting someone with intellectual disabilities. RESULTS: A nuanced contact variable, including frequency of contact and closeness and nature of the contact relationship, explained more of the variance in social distance, compared to the binary variable (contact as present or absent). Only the closeness of the relationship was individually predictive though, and the models explained only relatively small amounts of the variance. Structural equation modelling of contact, recognition, social distance and causal beliefs demonstrated that the model including the nuanced variable was an adequate fit for the data. CONCLUSIONS: Future research aimed at increasing our understanding of intellectual disability stigma should avoid assessing contact as a binary variable only, but consider other factors, particularly the closeness of contact relationships. Anti-stigma interventions may benefit from focussing on causal attributions as a method of reducing stigma.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2016 · doi:10.1111/jir.12241