Social integration of people with intellectual disability: insights from a social psychological research programme.
Neighbour feelings are mixed and predictable—address calm and worry early to ease housing integration.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Hattier et al. (2011) reviewed years of social-psychology work.
They asked how neighbours without ID really feel about living near people with ID.
The team built a map of neighbour reactions instead of simple prejudice.
What they found
Neighbours feel a mix of calm, worry, and helpful urges.
The feelings change with group size and how severe they think the ID is.
The authors call these anticipatory emotions—feelings that show up before any real contact.
How this fits with other research
Dubé et al. (2024) extend the idea to teens.
They show youth with ID who land in connected profiles later report higher self-esteem and less aggression.
Werner (2015) conceptually replicates the emotion focus.
Her survey finds calm affect, not just low negative affect, cuts social distance toward adults with ID.
Two older surveys seem to clash.
English et al. (1995) and Rutland et al. (1996) record very limited neighbour contact for adults in independent living or older Australians.
The gap is about age, service era, and housing type, not real disagreement.
The 2011 model still fits; it just warns you to prep neighbours first.
Why it matters
You can act before problems start.
When a new group home opens, run brief sessions that let neighbours voice worries and meet residents in small numbers.
Target calm, friendly mood rather than trying to erase all concern.
Pair each move-in with a neighbour invitation to a low-pressure coffee or yard game.
Small, positive first contacts shrink anticipatory fear and build the benevolent tolerance the research describes.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Social integration of people with intellectual disability (ID) moving into regular neighbourhoods tends to be studied and evaluated without detailed knowledge about the social psychological aspects of everyday interaction between neighbours with and without ID. The goal of the present paper is to show how the authors' social psychological research programme may contribute to this field of inquiry. METHODS: The different ways in which societies respond to features and behaviours that may be perceived as deviant are theoretically analysed. Results of empirical studies are reported to clarify how social responses to people with ID are special in terms of perceptions, emotions and interaction desires of people with and without ID during a pre-contact and contact phase. RESULTS: On the basis of the theoretical analysis, it is concluded that regular neighbouring in modern Western society often takes the form of benevolent tolerance, rather than stigmatisation and prejudice. However, empirical studies reveal that, prior to getting people with ID as new neighbours, prospective neighbours without ID experience a specific pattern of emotions that are associated with specific desires (e.g. with respect to information supply or a caring relationship). These anticipatory reactions are dependent on the expected size of the group moving in and on the severity of ID. Furthermore, while actually engaging in neighbouring, neighbours with and without ID appear to have experiences related to behaviour of residents, staff and features of housing facilities that are perceived as (in)congruent with regular neighbouring. CONCLUSIONS: It is concluded that interpersonal relationships between neighbours with and without ID should not be simplified in terms of attitudes that would be primarily prejudiced/stigmatising versus entirely accepting. Rather, our studies paint a more complex picture of sometimes ambivalent thoughts, feelings and interaction needs that all should be taken into account to make social integration a success.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2011 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2011.01446.x