Research investigating attitudes towards individuals with disabilities has largely focused
on self-reported explicit attitudes. Given that factors such as social desirability may
influence explicit attitudes, researchers have developed tools which instead assess less
consciously controllable implicit attitudes. Considering research on implicit attitudes thus
seems pertinent. A review of studies measuring implicit attitudes towards individuals
with physical disabilities (visual, motor or hearing) or intellectual disabilities via the
Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) was carried out.
Systematic searches of PsycINFO, CINAHL, EMBASE, ERIC, MEDLINE, PUBMED, Scopus and
Web of Science databases identified relevant articles published between January 2000 and
September 2012. Seventeen articles (reporting on 18 studies that employed the IAT) were
identified. These investigated implicit attitudes towards individuals with; physical
disabilities (N = 13), intellectual disabilities (N = 3), both physical and intellectual
disabilities (N = 1), and ‘unspecified disabilities’ (N = 1). Across all studies, moderate to
strong negative implicit attitudes were found and there was little to no association
between explicit and implicit attitudes. Individuals’ beliefs about the controllability of
their future, sensitivity to the concept of disease, and contact with individuals with
disabilities appear to be associated with implicit attitudes. A consistent pattern of
moderate to strong negative implicit attitudes towards individuals with disabilities was
evident. These studies provide a starting point, but methodological issues related to
sampling and the employed IATs limit the generalizability of these results. Further
research investigating implicit attitudes towards specific disability types, with a wider
subject pool are necessary as well as further investigation of factors that contribute to
these attitudes.