Contact, Disclosure, Stereotypes, and Attitudes Toward People with Physical Disabilities: The Mediator Effects of Intergroup Anxiety and Social Support

Abstract

Guided by intergroup contact theory (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew, 1998), the current study examined the influences of perceptions of individuals without disabilities (N = 189) regarding their communication experiences with the most frequent contact with an invisible physical disability on willingness to communicate with, stereotypes, and attitudes toward people with physical disabilities as a group. In addition, the current study tested the mediator effects of social support (Hypothesized Model 1) and intergroup communication anxiety (Hypothesized Model 2). Using Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS for SPSS, mediation analysis of model 1 showed that spontaneous and protective disclosure, communication frequency and quality all had a significant indirect effect through social support on willingness to interact, intergroup attitudes, and endorsement of stereotypes toward people with disabilities. Testing of the second model revealed that intergroup communication anxiety was a significant mediator between communication quality and all dependent measures. In both models, spontaneous disclosure and communication quality had a significant positive direct association with willingness to interact and a negative association with stereotypes, respectively. Furthermore, results revealed that communication quality had a significant positive direct effect on willingness to communicate in model 1 and communication frequency had a significant positive direct effect on both affective and behavioral attitudes in model 2. In addition to contact frequency and quality, this study is unique in terms of including communicative measures of contact and social support as a positive mediator in examining intergroup perceptions. Implications of the findings are discussed with respect to prior literature on interability communication (i.e., disability as an intergroup marker), and intergroup contact theory.