The Stucture And Internal Mechanisms Of The Attitudes Toward Persons With Disabilities

Peoples with disabilities are special in social life, so peoples without disabilities havenegative attitude to them; and this may lead to that peoples with disabilities.experienced moredifficulties. Therefore, to study and improve the attitude to people with disabilities hasimportant practical significance. Then through adopting appropriate measures to helpimproving the attitude to people with disabilities, persons with disabilities can better integrateinto society.This study included six parts. In the first three separate but interrelated studies, thestructures and related factors of cognitive evaluation, emotional reaction and behaviorintentions to peoples with disabilities were explored. Then in the forth study, based on theprevious studies, through hierarchical regression and path analysis techniques, cognitiveevaluation, emotional reaction and behavior intention to peoples with disabilities wereintegrated, the paths from cognitive evaluation, emotional reaction to behavior intentions wereexplored as well as the effect of each path. In the fifth and sixth studies, the implicit cognitiveevaluation, implicit emotional reaction to peoples with disabilities were explored.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) The structure of cognitive evaluation to peoples with disabilities consisted ofoptimism, fortitude, pessimism, helplessness, and they could be generalized intohigh-level factors named positive evaluation and negative evaluation. The structureof emotional reaction to peoples with disabilities consisted of admiration, disgust andempathy. The structure of behavior intention to peoples with disabilities consisted ofpassive avoidance, active approach, passive approach.(2) The positive evaluation to peoples with disabilities could directly or indirectlypromote active approach, and indirectly repressed the passive avoidance and thepassive approach by emotion. The negative evaluation to peoples with disabilitiescould directly or indirectly promote passive avoidance and passive approach, andindirectly repressed the active approach by emotion. (3) On the implicit level, peoples without disabilities exhibit more negative evaluation andmore disgust to peoples with disabilities.These suggested that peoples withoutdisabilities have negative implicit evaluation and implicit emotion reaction to peopleswith disabilities.(4) Gender had impact on the explicit attitude to peoples with disabilities, but had noimpact on the implicit attitude. On the explicit level, female had more positive attitudethan male, but they had no difference on the implicit level. The direct contact withpeople with disabilities could influence the explicit and implicit attitudes to peopleswith disabilities. On the explicit level, the people with direct contact had more positiveattitude than that without direct contact; but on the implicit level. the people withdirect contact had more negative attitude than that without direct contact.